When faith came by boat to Sabah

EASTER Sunday, the heart of the Christian faith, is not merely a remembrance of an event, but a renewal – the triumph of life over death, hope over despair and light over darkness. It is a story of resurrection, of journeys transformed and of faith carried forward against all odds.

In many ways, the story of faith landing in Sabah echoes that same Easter spirit. What began as fragile footsteps along distant shores, carried quietly by boat, would, through storms, sacrifice and perseverance, grow into a living and deeply rooted faith. Like Easter itself, it is a story not only remembered, but continually lived.

I have always had a fondness for history – shaped perhaps by school, old books, conversations in kopitiams and the quiet thrill of discovering how the past shapes the present. For history is never just about dates and events. It is about people, choices, stubborn hope and the echoes they leave behind.

In retirement, I found myself drawn into a new historical landscape – the story of the Catholic Church in Sabah. It began simply at the Archdiocesan Centre in Kota Kinabalu, where I met the archivist and quiet guardian of memory. Shelves of documents and fading photographs sit like time capsules. Historians write books. Archivists keep the evidence. When I asked where one should begin, she smiled and said, “From Don Carlos Cuarteron.”

Yet curiosity has a way of opening deeper doors. As I read on, I discovered that the story did not begin with Cuarteron alone. Long before colonial structures took shape, earlier missionaries had already reached these shores – travellers and priests whose journeys followed ancient trade routes across Asia.

Christianity did not arrive here riding a colonial tide. More often, it came quietly by boat. And from those humble beginnings unfolded a remarkable story – of missionaries, catechists and communities who, through storms and sacrifice, planted a faith that would take deep root in Sabahan soil.

Before Don Carlos Cuarteron

Long before churches rose in Penampang or Tambunan, before the Mill Hill missionaries arrived, and before Don Carlos Cuarteron became the first Apostolic Prefect of North Borneo, the Christian story had already brushed the edges of this island. But only lightly.

Borneo lay along one of the great maritime highways of the ancient world – the “Silk Road of the Sea.” Ships sailed between China, India, Arabia and the Malay Archipelago carrying silk, spices, porcelain and precious metals.

And sometimes, they carried something less visible: ideas, beliefs, faith. Christianity travelled along these same sea routes. Yet for centuries it passed near Borneo more often than it settled there. The island seemed almost destined to wait.

The distant echo of the ancient Church of the East

Among the earliest Christian missionaries to spread across Asia were the Ancient Church of the East, active as early as the 7th century. They carried the Gospel across vast distances – from Persia to India and even to China – gradually reaching parts of Southeast Asia.
Historians believe they may have ventured into the Malay Archipelago. But the evidence suggests their journeys reached only as far as Java and Sumatra. The Gospel had come close. But it had not yet landed.

A Franciscan on Borneo’s edge

Another faint footprint appears in the 14th century. In 1289, Pope Nicholas IV sent the Franciscan missionary John of Monte Corvino eastward. Along the way, another friar, Odoric of Pordenone, travelled widely across Asia and recorded his journeys.

In 1322, Odoric visited the coast near present-day Mukah in Sarawak. His visit was brief – more passing encounter than lasting mission – yet it remains one of the earliest recorded contacts between Christian missionaries and the island of Borneo. The Gospel had reached the edge of the island. But it did not stay.

Storm, shipwreck and a Jesuit priest

The next glimpse of Christianity here comes not by design, but by disaster. By the 16th and early 17th centuries, Portuguese traders and missionaries were sailing across Southeast Asian waters. Among them was a Jesuit priest, Fr Antonio Pereira, bound for Manila. In 1608, a violent storm wrecked his ship near Tempasuk, along the coast of present-day Kota Belud.

It was not a planned mission. But history often comes ashore shipwrecked. Pereira and his companions survived the sea, only to fall into another ordeal. They were captured by Illanun raiders and taken into slavery. These formidable seafarers from the Sulu region roamed the seas in swift war boats – sometimes trading, sometimes raiding, and often feared by coastal communities. It is perhaps from such memory that the word lanun, in Malay world for “pirates,” entered common speech.

Eventually, the Sultan of Brunei intervened and secured their release. Pereira was allowed to preach in Brunei, where he was remembered for his gentle spirit. But his story ended as precariously as it began. A year later, while returning to Manila, his ship sank. Fr Pereira drowned at sea. And once again, the missionary presence disappeared almost as quietly as it had appeared.

Another missionary flame flickered in the 17th century. In 1688, an Italian priest, Fr Antonino Ventimiglia, arrived in Banjarmasin. His work among the Ngadju, a proud Dayak river people of central Borneo, was surprisingly fruitful. Their lives flowed with the great rivers of Kalimantan – longhouses by the banks, boats as highways, traditions rooted in forest and spirit. Yet the mission did not last long. Ventimiglia died only two years later. And once again, the Christian presence faded.

Two centuries of waiting

For the next two hundred years, missionaries occasionally attempted to reach Borneo. Many travelled with Spanish or Portuguese networks across Southeast Asia. Yet most efforts were brief. Some were reassigned elsewhere. Others were defeated by distance, language and politics. The record is sparse. But one thing is clear: Christianity had visited Borneo several times. Yet it had not taken root.

The island seemed to be waiting – for the right moment, for the right season, for someone determined enough to stay.

The man who would begin the story

That moment finally arrived in the mid-nineteenth century. And when it did, it came in the form of a most unlikely missionary. Not a quiet parish priest. Not a scholar from Rome.

But a Spanish sailor who had battled storms, salvaged shipwrecks and even made a small fortune at sea – before deciding to sail in a completely different direction. His name was Don Carlos Cuarteron (1816–1879).

And with his arrival, the Catholic story of North Borneo truly began. History sometimes begins quietly. But occasionally it begins with a man who seems perfectly comfortable walking straight into storms.

Cuarteron was not destined for the gentle rhythm of parish bells and Sunday homilies. In his younger days he lived the life of a sailor, navigating the treacherous waters of the South China Sea – a region famous for storms, pirates and unpredictable currents.

Navigation in those days demanded courage as much as skill. Charts were incomplete. Reefs lurked beneath the waves. Sailors relied on instinct, compass and a good measure of bravery. Cuarteron seemed to have all three.

At one point he salvaged the wreck of an opium clipper and amassed a personal fortune in silver – the kind of windfall that could have secured a comfortable retirement somewhere in Europe, perhaps sipping wine by the Mediterranean and retelling sea stories that improved with every telling.

But comfort did not seem to interest him. The seas he sailed were not only highways of trade. They were also corridors of suffering. The waters around the Sulu Archipelago and northern Borneo were plagued by piracy and slave raiding. Enslaved and vulnerable coastal communities lived under constant threat. Cuarteron saw this reality up close. And instead of sailing away from the problem, he sailed straight toward it.

Rather than retire with his fortune – something sensible bankers would strongly recommend – he devoted his life and resources to missionary work in North Borneo. It was a decision that placed him in the middle of one of the most complicated regions of nineteenth-century Southeast Asia.

North Borneo was not merely remote. It was a crossroads of power: British ambitions expanding from the south, Spanish influence flowing from the Philippines, local sultanates asserting authority, traders criss-crossing the seas, and pirates prowling the waters. And somewhere in the middle of this geopolitical chessboard stood Don Carlos Cuarteron – sailor, priest, advocate, negotiator and occasionally reluctant diplomat.

He knew Rajah James Brooke, the famed White Rajah of Sarawak. He interacted with British administrators such as Spencer St John, and at times clashed with officials like Hugh Low. He worked among local rulers and communities whose own political realities shaped life in the region. It was not an easy balance. Cuarteron often found himself navigating not only oceans, but politics.

In the book, Crowned with the Stars by Mike Gibby, Cuarteron was described as something of a “storm petrel” – a seabird known for flying boldly through turbulent weather. The metaphor fits perfectly. His life seemed permanently surrounded by storms: storms of politics, storms of missionary struggle, and occasionally very real storms at sea.

As I read about Cuarteron’s extraordinary life, my mind wandered back to a cinema. Like many of my generation, I once watched the film The Mission, the powerful story of Jesuit missionaries working among indigenous communities in South America. The film left a deep impression on me – not only because of its haunting music, but because it captured something rarely understood outside missionary circles: the quiet courage of those who carry faith into uncertain lands.

In the film, missionaries walk into jungles, defend vulnerable communities and navigate the uneasy alliances of empire, commerce and faith. Reading about Cuarteron years later, the resemblance struck me. Different continent. Different century. But the same spirit.

Men who could have lived comfortably elsewhere choosing instead to walk into distant frontiers – not driven by adventure, but by conviction. Missionaries rarely appear heroic in their own time. Often, they simply appear stubborn. History later calls them pioneers.

The first Apostolic Prefect

In 1857, Cuarteron was appointed the first Apostolic Prefect of Labuan and Borneo, establishing the earliest Catholic missionary jurisdiction in the region. For readers unfamiliar with Church structures, an apostolic prefect is essentially a missionary leader appointed by the Vatican to guide the Church in a region where the Christian community is still young.

Think of it as the startup phase of the Church. Instead of a bishop overseeing a mature diocese, a priest is entrusted with building the foundations – organising missions, nurturing communities and helping the Church grow strong enough one day to become a diocese.

In other words, Cuarteron was asked to build something from almost nothing. And the territory he was responsible for was enormous. Imagine trying to run a mission across an island the size of Borneo without roads, reliable communication or modern transport. Travel meant sailing between coastal settlements, navigating rivers deep into the interior, and sometimes walking muddy jungle paths for days.

There was no GPS. No WhatsApp. Just boats, boots and determination. Cuarteron dreamed not merely of building churches, but of building communities – places where people could live free from slavery, where education could flourish and where faith could grow alongside everyday life.

It was an ambitious vision. Perhaps even a slightly reckless one. But pioneers rarely succeed by thinking small. The realities of North Borneo, however, proved tougher than even Cuarteron’s determination. Resources were scarce. Support from Europe was uncertain. Political tensions complicated missionary work. And the vast geography of the island made pastoral care extraordinarily difficult.

Even a man as driven as Cuarteron could not build the mission alone. Eventually the early mission weakened, and the Catholic presence in North Borneo struggled to survive. But history would later reveal something important. Seeds planted with conviction rarely disappear. Sometimes they simply wait quietly beneath the soil.

The Mill Hill Missionaries

History often moves in chapters. If Don Carlos Cuarteron was the restless sailor who first carried the Catholic flame into North Borneo, the Mill Hill Missionaries were the men who arrived to keep that flame burning. And they came from a place very different from Borneo – England.

The story begins in Mill Hill, a quiet suburb in North London. In 1866, a visionary English priest, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, founded a missionary society dedicated to bringing the Catholic faith to distant lands. It soon became known simply as the Mill Hill Missionaries.

Their training ground was peaceful – rolling English countryside, brick buildings, study and prayer. But the world awaiting them was anything but peaceful. Young missionaries knew they would travel far, but few truly understood where they would end up.

Some would be sent to one of the most challenging mission fields in Southeast Asia: North Borneo. By the late nineteenth century, the mission begun by Cuarteron had weakened. The land was vast, communities scattered and church structures fragile. The Vatican needed a society capable of rebuilding the mission. The task fell to the Mill Hill missionaries.

In 1881, the first priests arrived, led by Fr Thomas Jackson, who became the Prefect Apostolic. They arrived quietly, with few possessions but strong resolve to begin again. North Borneo was unlike anything they had known. England’s cool rain was replaced by thick tropical humidity. Mountains, dense forests and winding rivers separated villages across great distances.

The missionaries soon realised that in Borneo, rivers were the real roads. Boats carried them along the Papar, Tempasuk and Marudu rivers, often accompanied by villagers and catechists. Travel was slow, sometimes exhausting. But slowly, relationships formed. Trust grew. And with trust came faith.

The early churches were simple wooden chapels built with local materials and local hands. Yet these humble structures became centres of community life – places for prayer, learning and gathering.

The missionaries also understood something vital: the Church grows not through buildings alone, but through relationships and education. Mission schools provided many communities with their first access to formal learning.

But perhaps their greatest legacy was the catechists – local men and women trained to teach the faith and guide their villages. Missionaries might visit occasionally. Catechists remained. And through them, the Gospel travelled steadily from village to village across North Borneo.

From mission to home: How faith became Sabahan

After the pioneering efforts of the Mill Hill missionaries, the story of the Catholic Church in Sabah did not grow through priests alone. It grew through people in Sabah. Quietly, steadily, village by village.

The real bridge between the missionaries and the communities was the catechists who carried the faith on foot long after the missionary boats had sailed away. In many kampungs, the first teacher of the Gospel was not a foreign priest but a familiar face from the village. They gathered families for prayer, taught children the catechism and kept the faith alive between the rare visits of travelling priests. Through them, the Church slowly became not something foreign, but something Sabahan.

Then came the storms of history. During the Japanese occupation in World War 2, several missionaries chose to remain with their people despite grave danger. Some paid the ultimate price and are remembered today as the martyrs of North Borneo – quiet witnesses that faith is not merely preached but lived, even in the darkest hours.

The post-war years brought rebuilding, new vocations and growing local leadership. Yet another testing moment came in the early 1970s, when immigration policies led to the departure of many foreign missionaries.

What seemed like a setback became a turning point. Lay leaders stepped forward. Local priests emerged. The Church learned to stand on its own feet. In time, mission territories matured into dioceses, with Sabahan bishops shepherding their own communities. This is another story in the pipeline.

Easter on the horizon

What began with a Spanish sailor and a handful of missionaries has, by God’s grace and the quiet faithfulness of many generations, become a living local Church in Sabah. The faith that once arrived quietly by boat now sails outward again – carried by Sabahan hearts into the wider world.

The horizon remains wide, and the winds are not always predictable. Yet that has always been the Christian story: to keep faith through changing seas, to row on through storms, and to trust that beyond Good Friday there is always Easter morning.

For Easter is the Church’s great reminder that hope is never buried for long. Light returns. Life rises. And what seems fragile can, in God’s hands, become enduring.

May that same Easter hope continue to guide the Church in Sabah – from shore to shore, from family to family, and from one generation to the next.

To all who celebrate, a blessed and joyful Easter.