Paul-Antoine Léonard de Villefeix OP (born 1728) was a French Dominican priest. He conducted the first Christian service in New Zealand.[1] He was the chaplain of French navigator and explorer Jean-François-Marie de Surville when de Surville, in his ship, the Saint Jean Baptiste, sighted the North Island of New Zealand in 1769. De Surville remained two weeks in Doubtless Bay, near Whatuwhiwhi, where Father Paul-Antoine Léonard de Villefeix celebrated the first Mass in New Zealand waters on Christmas Day 1769.[2]
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Father Villefeix was born near Etouars in Perigord. One of his brothers, Léonard de Lestang, was also a priest, himself becoming parish priest of Etouars.[3]
Father Villefeix was invited by the Surville family to be the chaplain for an expedition to the South Pacific on the ship Saint Jean Baptiste led by navigator and explorer Jean-François-Marie de Surville.[3] In December 1869 the ship arrived in Doubtless Bay and a landing was made at Rangiaohia on the Karikari Peninsula where Father Villefeix went ashore, unaccompanied by fellow crew members, and wandered through one of the villages.[3]
Father Villefeix was the first Christian minister to set foot on New Zealand, pre-dating Samuel Marsden by forty-four years; and he was the first ordained minister to lead a Christian service there. As a priest he was required to say Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation (of which Christmas Day 1769, when Saint John Baptiste was still in Doubtless Bay, was one). Father Villefeix is also recorded as leading prayers for the sick on Christmas Eve and for burials in Doubtless Bay.[3]
In April 1770, the Surville expdition reached Peru and Captain Surville was drowned while trying to land through surf on a beach. Seventeen months later, in 1771, while the Saint Jean-Baptiste was being held by Spanish authorites in Callao, Surville's nephew and Father Villefeix left the ship to go goldmining up a river.[3]