Tiripone Mama Taira Putairi (also known as Tryphon Mama Taira; 1845 or 1846 – 27 December 1881) was a Mangarevan Roman Catholic priest and the first indigenous person ordained in Eastern Polynesia. Born into a chiefly family in the Gambier Islands, he was educated by French Picpus missionaries and was ordained at Papeete on 24 December 1873. He then served as a catechist priest at Faaone, Tahiti, and worked with the missionary Honoré Laval on a Mangarevan-language history of the island's pre-Christian past. He died of pneumonia in Valparaíso, Chile, about two months after arriving there.

His father, Bernardo Putairi, was the last regent of Mangareva, and French missionaries reportedly hoped that Tiripone would eventually inherit the regency. He died before his father, and France annexed the islands in 1881. No other Polynesian from French Polynesia was ordained until 1954.

Early life and education

Tiripone was born at Rikitea on Mangareva. The Cathedral of Papeete's parish history gives September 1845 as his birth date, although he is more commonly listed as born in 1846. He belonged to the togoʻiti class of chiefs, apparently a junior branch of the main royal line. His parents were Gertrude Toategaru and Bernardo Putairi, also called Maohomotu in some sources, who became regent in 1873. Baptismal records identify at least four brothers and one sister.

Catholicism reached the Gambier Islands before his birth. Picpus priests Honoré Laval and François Caret arrived in 1834 and won the support of King Maputeoa and his uncle Matua, the high priest. Brother Urbain de Florit de La Tour de Clamouze founded and headed the Re'e Seminary College (also called the College of Anaotiki) on Aukena. It was one of the earliest institutions of higher learning in the South Pacific, and it taught native Mangarevan boys Latin and French as prospective clergymen. Tiripone studied there alongside the young king Joseph Gregorio II.

In 1869 Father Nicolas Blanc selected Tiripone and two other students to continue clerical studies in Tahiti. The other two were later dismissed. Tiripone received the tonsure and the four minor orders on 21 September 1869. He then returned to the Gambier Islands in a cassock to study under Blanc and took his meals at Laval's table. He went back to Tahiti on 16 July 1870, aboard the Eliza with Blanc. After studying at the mission, he entered the seminary that Bishop Tepano Jaussen had built at Pamatai, in Faaa, in 1871.

Priesthood Tiripone was ordained a subdeacon on 7 June 1873. On 24 December 1873, Jaussen, the Vicar Apostolic of Tahiti, ordained him a priest in the chapel of the bishop's residence in Papeete. He is generally recognized as the first indigenous priest in Eastern Polynesia. The Tongan Soakimi Gatafahefa had earlier been ordained in Rome on 10 June 1865, which makes Tiripone the first Eastern Polynesian rather than the first Polynesian.; the Cathedral of Papeete's parish history likewise notes that the first Polynesian priest was a Tongan ordained in Rome in 1865 ().

Tiripone was not posted to the Gambier Islands. He was assigned instead as a priest-catechist at Faaone, a village in the modern Tahitian commune of Taiarapu-Est, and apparently lacked authority to hear confessions. Some accounts suggest that his superiors doubted his reliability and feared he might revert to Polynesian ways in his private life. Little else is documented about his work at Faaone.

Historical writing Tiripone worked under the supervision of the retired Laval, who was living in Tahiti, on a history of Mangareva written in the Mangarevan language. The work is known as E atoga Mangareva mei te ao eteni roa ("History of Mangareva since the pagan era"). A copy dated 1881 and attributed to Father Vincent Ferrier Janeau is held in the archives of the Sacred Hearts congregation in Rome, and the Archdiocese of Papeete holds a Mangarevan manuscript of the text, which the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau has digitized. Buck, writing in 1938, reported that a manuscript was deposited with the Sacred Hearts congregation at Braine-le-Comte, Belgium.

Death After several years of local ministry, Tiripone asked to be sent to the Sacred Hearts community in Valparaíso. He left Papeete on 11 September 1881 aboard the German brig-schooner Nautilus, accompanied by Father Ortaire Orvain, and arrived on 16 October. A handwritten letter by him in Mangarevan, dated 1881, is preserved in Rome. He died of pneumonia in Valparaíso on 27 December 1881. Orvain later wrote to a fellow priest that Tiripone had edified the community during his two months there and was well liked by everyone.

Political significance Tiripone's position as a priest from the ruling elite carried political weight. After his father became regent in 1873, the French missionaries under Blanc and Jaussen expected, according to the French writer Paul Deschanel, that the regency would pass to Tiripone. As a priest, he would then place the archipelago under the control of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Tiripone died before his father, and the islands were instead annexed by France in 1881.

Legacy The Catholic Church in French Polynesia continued to rely on non-native priests after his death. The seminary intended to train indigenous clergy, which had moved to Papeete and later to Pamatai, was closed by Jaussen on 30 May 1874 after producing no further native candidates. The next French Polynesian priest, Michel-Gaspard Coppenrath, was not ordained until 1954.

The Cathedral of Papeete's parish history lists him among its diocesan priests, notes that he is buried in Chile, and calls him the first Polynesian priest of Eastern Polynesia.

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