The Archdiocese of Honiara is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in the Solomon Islands. It is the successor of the apostolic prefecture of the British Solomon Islands, which was erected in 1897. The ecclesiastical province of Honiara was created in 1978, the first such creation of Pope John Paul II, and contains two suffragan sees: Gizo (1966, formerly the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Solomon Islands) and Auki (1982). Holy Cross Cathedral in the episcopal see of Honiara on the island of Guadalcanal houses the cathedra of the archdiocese. It was dedicated on 17 September 1978 by then-Bishop Daniel Stuyvenberg, S.M. New York-born Archbishop Christopher Cardone, O.P. was appointed on 22 June 2016 to replace Dubliner Archbishop Adrian Smith S.M., who presented his resignation on reaching the age limit after some 32 years as Archbishop of Honiara. History The first Christians to arrive in the Solomon Islands were Spanish. The explorer Álavaro de Mendaña de Neyra arrived on the island of Santa Isabel on 9 February 1568 and claimed the territory for Spain. Since 1568 was a thousand years after Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, had composed the great hymn to the holy cross, Vexilla Regis, the explorers erected a cross on Santa Isabel Island - the explorers' devotion endures in the patronage of the Holy Cross of the present-day cathedral. The first Mass in the south Pacific was celebrated by a Franciscan missionary who had travelled with Mendaña. The explorer returned to the islands in 1595, but failed to establish a successful colony and the Spanish left definitively for Peru. French Marists were sent in 1837 to the south Pacific by their founder, Jean-Claude Colin, at the insistence of Pope Gregory XVI. The first bishop in Melanesia, Bishop , was mortally wounded three days after his arrival at San Cristobal, after he had refused to gift his episcopal ring to a hostile tribe. Shortly after the assassination of Bishop Épalle, the Marist Fathers established the first mission station at Makira Bay. There Fr Verguet learned the local language, Kahua, and wrote a basic catechism for the locals. The new bishop, Jean George Collomb, decided to quit San Cristobal for the deaths of three priests to Malaria, and to set up the mission in Woodlark. It was Pope Leo XIII who established the first diocesan level structure in the Solomon Islands. His bull dated 27