With the war
breaking out in Europe around 1939, Pope Pius XII, afraid that the war breaking
out in Europe would spread to the Pacific region, ordered Bishop McCarthy to go
to the South Seas and to Bougainville to assist Bishop Wade should the war
reach that part of the globe.
For two
years, Bishop McCarthy stayed and assisted Bishop Wade during 1940 to 1941.
It was during
this time that Bishop McCarthy built a chapel out of local bush materials in
Sohano Island hilltop where bishops and priests conduct holy mass for the
locals.
Bishop
McCarthy left for the United States at the end of 1941.
The Imperial
Armies of Japan invaded Bougainville the following year.
All catholic
missionaries were either killed or taken as prisoners resulting to the
abandonment of the chapel in the Sohano hilltop.
Over the
years since the end of the war in 1945, the chapel had decomposed together with
the brass altar chalices, patens and its Tabernacle. The chapel has been
covered by dirt and thick shrubs.
In 2003,
about 60 years since it was built, an apparition of the Blessed Mother
occurred.
An eighty-year
old man, who was teenager by then and was attending mass at the chapel, remains
to be the living witness of the Blessed Mother’s apparition.
He attests
the veracity of the apparition, saying that it was not a coincident but a
Divine Providence. He confirms that the apparition took place where the first
catholic chapel in Sohano hilltop stood.
Soon after
the apparition, a mayor cleaned up the area. The family who lives meters away
found altar entities and brought them to then Bishop of Bougainville, Bishop
Henk Kronenberg.
It is with
this apparition of the Blessed Mother that a temporary chapel built from bush
materials was erected in honour of her at the direction of Bishop Bernard
Unabali, current bishop of Bougainville.
On October
15, 2011, 8th anniversary of the Blessed Mother’s apparition, Fr.
Tondikop, Parish Priest of Hahela Parish, named and blessed the chapel as “Our
Lady of the Immaculate Heart”.
The residents of Sohano
Island then desired that the deteriorating chapel be replaced by a new
permanent building. The new chapel will be built in the original site of the
Blessed Mother’s apparition and will be named “The Chapel of Our Lady of the
Immaculate Heart”.