Saint Peter To Rot

He was born in 1912 at Rakunai, which the Holy See calls a trading village, on New Britain; Vatican News gives the date as March 5. ¹⁶ The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints says it was thirty years after the first missionaries reached the island, in 1882. ² His father, Angelo To Puia, was a village chief, and he and Peter's mother, Maria Ia Tumul, were baptized as adults, among the first generation of Christians there. ²⁵ Vatican News says Angelo gave the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart the land for the church, school and mission house at Rakunai. ⁵

The Dicastery makes Peter the third of six children. ² His great-nephew, Archbishop Rochus Tatamai of Rabaul, told Vatican News he was the third of four, and named them: Theresa IaVarpilak, Josef Tatamai, Peter and Gabriel Telo. ⁷

At eighteen, on the advice of the parish priest, Father Carl Laufer, he enrolled at Saint Paul's College at Taliligap, which trained full-time catechists. ¹⁵ The Archdiocese of Melbourne says Laufer had suggested he might become a priest and that his father would not hear of it, so the catechists' school was something of a compromise. ¹⁰ In early 1933, at twenty-one, he became the catechist of Rakunai. ¹²

On November 11, 1936, he married Paula Ia Varpit in the parish church at Rakunai, and they had three children. ¹² For Your Marriage, a USCCB site, says he married at twenty-two and that the third child was born after his death. ⁸ Melbourne says the marriage was arranged, that Paula had been his classmate, and that they were happy. ¹⁰

John Paul II described him as "a devoted husband, a loving father and a dedicated catechist known for his kindness, gentleness and compassion". ³ He said Peter "treated his wife Paula with deep respect and prayed with her morning and evening", and spent as much time with his children as he could. ³

In January 1942 the Japanese army occupied the island and imprisoned the European missionaries, and Peter found himself leading the mission alone. ¹ Melbourne says that Father Laufer, before he was taken to the camp at Vunapope, put him in charge with the words "Help them, so that they don't forget about God." ¹⁰

He baptized, assisted at marriages, visited the sick and led the people in prayer. ³⁸ The Dicastery says he buried the dead, and that he often walked five or six hours, in secret, to the prison where the missionaries were held to receive consecrated hosts for the villages. ² The occupiers grew harsher, and in March 1944 forbade him all religious activity; he built an underground shelter and kept gathering people for prayer and some of the sacraments, knowing that others had been arrested and killed for the same thing. ¹

To win the support of village leaders, the Japanese legalized polygamy, which the Catholic missionaries had opposed for decades. ¹ The Dicastery dates this to June 1944; Vatican News says it came as the war drew to an end. ²⁵ "When the authorities legalized and encouraged polygamy, Blessed Peter knew it to be against Christian principles and firmly denounced this practice," John Paul II said. ³ He quoted him: "I have to fulfil my duty as a Church witness to Jesus Christ". ³

Who handed him over depends on the source. Vatican News reported in March 2025 that he confronted his own older brother, who had taken a second wife, and that the brother reported him to the police. ⁶ Its June 2025 account names the policeman To Metapa as the man with the power to order his arrest. ⁵ Melbourne says spies from the village reported him. ¹⁰

The Holy See says he was arrested in the spring of 1945 and sentenced to two months in prison; the Dicastery says April or June 1945; Melbourne says he was sent to a labor camp in 1944. ¹²¹⁰ When his sister visited him, he told her, in the Holy See's English, "Do not cry. I am here for a good cause. I am very happy, because I am here for my faith." ¹ According to the Dicastery, the day before he died he told a village chief that he was there for those who broke their marriage vows and for those who did not want God's work to go forward, and that he had already been condemned to death. ²

On the day of his death, John Paul II said, he asked his wife to bring him his catechist's crucifix, and "condemned without trial, he suffered his martyrdom calmly". ³ The Dicastery quotes Paula's memory of that last visit, when she asked him for the only time to stop his work and he answered that it was God's work. ²

The Holy See says he was killed by lethal injection on a Friday in July 1945, toward the end of his sentence. ¹ The Dicastery says that on the night of July 7, 1945, two Japanese doctors came to his cell; one gave him an injection, and when he began to retch the doctor covered his mouth and held him down until he died. ² Vatican News tells it much the same way without the date, and says the policeman To Metapa then announced that the "mission boy" had been very sick and had died. ⁵ Melbourne reports that when his body was prepared for burial, puncture marks were found on the back of his head and his throat seemed badly injured, and that "it is supposed" he was beaten when the injection did not work quickly enough. ¹⁰

He was given a chief's burial in the cemetery beside the church where he had served, and his people at once regarded him as a martyr. ²⁸ The Dicastery says they wrote on the cross over his grave, "To Rot. Martyr of the faith", in words translated here from its Italian. ²

In 1952 the vicar apostolic of Rabaul, Monsignor Leo Scharmach, set up a commission of three priests for a preliminary inquiry, and the cause then lay almost untouched for thirty years. ² The diocesan inquiry ran from 1987 to 1989, and the decree on his martyrdom was promulgated on April 2, 1993. ² John Paul II beatified him at Port Moresby on January 17, 1995, calling him "an honoured son of the Tolai people, a catechist from New Britain" and the "Martyr-catechist of Rakunai". ¹³

On January 18, 2024, the bishops of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands asked Pope Francis to canonize him without a further miracle. ² Francis approved on March 28, 2025, and Leo XIV, at his first consistory on June 13, 2025, set the date. ²⁵ He canonized him on October 19, 2025, among martyrs for their faith "like Bishop Ignazio Choukrallah Maloyan and catechist Peter To Rot". ⁴

The Archdiocese of Melbourne says he "is known as a patron of married couples", for his defense of Christian marriage. ¹⁰ John Paul II said at his beatification that "the Martyr's example speaks also to married couples". ³ No source consulted here makes him patron of families or of fathers, so this page does not. ¹²⁸¹⁰

Saint Peter To Rot's feast day is July 7. ²⁸⁹ The Dicastery for the Causes of Saints gives it as his liturgical memorial, the day it gives for his death in 1945. ² CathNews reported in July 2026 that his first feast as a saint was kept by the Papua New Guinean community on the Gold Coast of Australia on July 5, with a homily on the sacrament of marriage and an opening chant and dance from his Tolai culture. ⁹

He was a lay catechist, not a priest. ¹³ When the priests were taken away, the catechist was the Church in Rakunai, and he went on baptizing, marrying, burying and praying with people from a shelter dug underground. ¹²³

What he died for was not doctrine in the abstract. Polygamy had been offered to the village chiefs by the occupiers as a favor, and some of the men he opposed were his own people; by one account, his own brother. ¹²⁶ His wife asked him to stop once, on the last day, and he would not. ²

John Paul II asked his people to remember three things about him: his faith, his life in the family, and his work as a catechist. ³ He was a catechist for twelve years and a husband for less than nine. ¹²

He told his sister he was happy to be in prison for his faith. ¹ He died at night in his cell, at the hands of a doctor. ² The Church does not make the second any less hard because of the first.