Francis Hagai

Francis Hagai (c. 1940 – 7 July 1974) was the leader of the Hahalis Welfare Society (HWS) on Buka Island, in what is now the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea.

[2] However, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography he later "became contemptuous of the Church's failure to provide utilitarian education" and "apostatized after allegedly being shamed publicly by a confessor for a sexual sin".

[1] Outside of its economic activities, Hagai and Teosin also sought to establish the HWS as an alternative church (sori lotu in Tok Pisin) with syncretic elements.

Worship was held in open areas next to cemeteries, where "prayer and ritual invoked the dead to return and usher in a new world of lap-laps, tinned food, motorbikes and cars".

[2] Hagai nonetheless maintained some elements of Catholic worship, producing a series of liturgies in the Halia language and introducing a parallel to the Eucharist that involved sharing of sliced banana instead of sacramental bread.

The district officer John Keith McCarthy stated his agreement with Pasquarelli, but noted that it would be politically unwise to prevent Hagai from travelling to Australia.

[10] His entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography calls him "a virile leader who sought to reconcile liberation from custom with traditional communality", leading an "autochthonous movement aspiring to modernization through self-rule".