Bishop Lowe was installed as Bishop of Auckland this month and for the seven years before that was Bishop of Hamilton, the diocese of which Gisborne is part. Long-time parishioner Ross Gregory said Frances Baumann did a lot of things that kept the church ticking over.
“The big thing about Frances is her huge commitment,” he said.
“For all weekday masses, she takes part in praying the rosary before the Mass; she's been a reader at the Mass; she's managed the flower rosters; she's polished the church brass.
“Outside of that, she's been involved in the wider community with Pregnancy Counselling Services and with the Catholic Inquiry Centre.”
Frances Baumann has been a member of the Legion of Mary for over 50 years. The Legion was founded in Dublin, where it still has its headquarters, and — with a membership of over 10 million — is the largest apostolic organisation of lay people in the Catholic Church.
In Gisborne, apart from encouraging Catholics in their faith and meeting regularly for prayer, Legion members visit the sick and welcome new members of the parish.
Frances Baumann is respected for the way she nurtures the faith of others — often by lending religious books to seekers of spiritual enlightenment — and for the simple, practical approach she takes to her church roles.
Away from church activities, but arising from the same Christian sentiments, she has helped the Save the Children charitable organisation.
In her working life, many new mothers felt the benefit of her assured guidance when she was a nurse in the maternity wing of Gisborne Hospital.
Frances Clark (as she was then) arrived in Gisborne in 1963 as a trained nurse with a spirit of adventure that had already taken her to Canada and Singapore.
Originally from Thorpe Bay, just east of Southend, on the Thames Estuary in Essex, she did her three years' training at Guy's Hospital, London, then wanted to go overseas. Frances and two nursing friends found a magazine advertisement seeking four nurses for a small town called Melita in south-western Manitoba, Canada.
Having persuaded a fourth nurse to make up the quartet, they travelled by sea to the east coast of Canada and faced a train journey of a day-and-a-half.
They got off at the city of Brandon, about a hundred kilometres north-east of Melita, on a Monday and asked when they could get a train for the last leg of their journey.
“Wednesday,” they were told.
While they fretted about what to do for the next two days, the mayor of Melita turned up at the station to drive them the rest of the way.
They stayed a year.
“It was a bit boring, very quiet,” Frances said. “They had no really sick people.”
Back in the United Kingdom, Frances worked in the north of England for a year, then joined the Royal Air Force Nursing Service and did a two-year stint in Singapore. Then it was back home again.
After their father Arthur died, Frances's brother Paul thought about taking his family to Australia. Frances thought Australia was too big and suggested New Zealand. Paul investigated and found he could get a transfer within the insurance company for which he worked. He could take up a position in an office either near Auckland or in Gisborne. He thought Gisborne would be a better place to raise a family. Paul came out first, by air, to get organised and his young family, along with his sister Frances and mother Eileen, followed by sea.
Frances wondered whether they'd made the right choice when the official checking her passport on arrival in Wellington asked where she was heading and, on being told, exclaimed, “Gisborne?!”
Nevertheless, she found people in Gisborne accepted her easily and welcomed her wherever she went.
“It wasn't quite so staid as England,” Frances said.
She married a widower, Ambrose Story, who died in 1974, and then Tom Baumann, whom she knew through the Legion of Mary. He died in 1993.
Frances has been a Gisborne resident for nigh on 60 years. She has extended family here, and the love and respect of friends she sees at Mass most days, if not every day, of the week.
