Not a Tourist, But a Brother: Returning to French Polynesia After Two Decades

A Conversation with Father Daniel Nassaney, O.M.I.

When Father Daniel Nassaney, OMI first arrived in French Polynesia in 1977, he was twenty-nine years old and freshly ordained. He had been sent with two other Oblates—Father Jules Guy, OMI from Rhode Island and Father Patrice Morel, OMI from France—to discern whether this far-flung archipelago could become a true Oblate mission. What they found was not just a place of beauty, but a people longing for ownership of their faith.

“The Church had been there for nearly 150 years,” Father Daniel recalled, “but most of the priests were from overseas. The Polynesians did not believe they could lead their own Church.”

That changed quickly. Within weeks of arriving, Father Daniel was asked to take over the minor seminary and serve as vocation director for the Diocese of Papeete. “I was supposed to spend a year learning the language and culture,” he said. “Instead, I started the next morning.”

He spent the next twenty-seven years building seminaries, mentoring young men, and traveling across the islands and atolls—sometimes by cargo ship, sometimes in open plywood boats powered by a single outboard motor. “Some places had not seen a priest in decades,” he said. “One chapel had been built in 1955 and had only hosted three Masses in thirty-five years. I was the first to stay.”

The Missionary Oblates chose to serve in Faa’a, the poorest parish near the airport, rather than the comfortable one offered in Mahina. They developed a new pastoral model—rotating priests through the atolls, organizing parishes into neighborhoods, and empowering lay leaders. “People said it would never work,” Father Daniel remembered. “But it did. And it still does.”

One moment stayed with him. “I overheard two boys talking. One said, ‘The Oblates are pūpa’a,’ meaning outsiders. The other said, ‘No, they are like us. We eat their food.’ That was the moment I knew we belonged.”

Father Daniel left French Polynesia in 2004 to serve in retreat ministry in the United States. In 2025, after twenty-one years away, he returned—not as a visitor, but as a brother.

“I told everyone I was not coming back as a tourist,” he said. “I was coming to serve.” He stayed with former seminarians, celebrated Masses, visited the sick, and gave school blessings. “For three weeks, I did not speak any English. It was all French and Tahitian.”

In Mahina, Father Abraham—one of his former seminarians—welcomed him into the rectory. “Nothing has changed,” he told Father Daniel. “I run the parish exactly the way you did fifty years ago.” The model endures. The spirit lives on.

“The people have pride in their clergy now,” Father Daniel said. “We helped build a Polynesian Church. And it is still growing.”