It was by so precious a death that this apostolical man closed a career of nearly forty years of painful missionary toil. His fasts and vigils had greatly enfeebled his constitution, and, when entreated to take precautions for his safety, he answered: “My measures are taken. God has committed this flock to my charge, and I will share their fate, being too happy if permitted to sacrifice myself for them.”
Well did his superior in Canada, M. de Bellemont, reply, when requested to offer Masses for his soul: “In the words of S. Augustine, I say it would be wronging a martyr to pray for him.”
There can be no question that Sebastian Râle was one of the most remarkable men of his day. A devoted Christian and finished scholar, commanding in manners and elegant in address, of persuasive eloquence and great administrative ability, he courted death and starvation, for the sole end of salvation for the Indian.
From the death of Father Râle until 1730 the mission at Norridgewock was without a priest. In that year, however, the superior at Quebec sent Father James de Sirenne to that station. The account given by this father, of the warmth with which he was received, and of the manner in which the Indians had sought to keep their faith, is very touching. The women with tears and sobs hastened with their unbaptized babes to the priest.
In all these years no Protestant clergyman had visited them, for Eliot was almost the only one who devoted himself to the conversion of the Indians, though even he, as affirmed by Bancroft, had never approached the Indian tribe that dwelt within six miles of Boston Harbor until five years after the cross had been borne, by the religious zeal of the French, from Lake Superior to the valley of the Mississippi.
But Father Sirenne could not be permitted to remain any length of time with the Abnakis. Again were they deserted, having a priest with them only at long intervals.
Then came the peace of 1763, in which France surrendered Canada. This step struck a most terrible blow at the missions; for although the English government guaranteed to the Canadians absolute religious freedom, they yet took quiet steps to rid themselves of the Jesuit Fathers.
A short breathing space, and another war swept over the land, and with this perished the last mission in Maine. In 1775 deputies from the various tribes in Maine and Nova Scotia met the Massachusetts council. The Indians announced their intention of adhering to the Americans, but begged, at the same time, for a French priest. The council expressed their regret at not being able to find one.
“Strange indeed was it,” says Shea, “that the very body which, less than a century before, had made it felony for a Catholic priest to visit the Abnakis, now regretted their inability to send these Christian Indians a missionary of the same faith and nation.”
Years after, when peace was declared, and the few Catholics in Maryland had chosen the Rev. John Carroll—a member of the proscribed Society of Jesus—as bishop, the Abnakis of Maine sent a deputation bearing the crucifix of Father Râle. This they presented to the bishop, with earnest supplications for a priest.