Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Honiara Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Honiara The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Honiara is a Latin Rite Metropolitan Archdiocese in the Solomon Islands. It is the latter day successor of the Prefecture Apostolic of the English Solomon Islands, which was erected in 1897. The Province of Honiara was created in 1978, the first such creation of Pope John Paul II, and has two suffragan sees: Gizo (1966, formerly the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Solomon Islands) and Auki (1982). Holy Cross Cathedral, Honiara, on the island of Guadalcanal, is the seat of the Metropolitan See. It was dedicated on 17 September 1978 by
Honiara the South Seas Evangelical Church, the United Church, the Seventh-day Adventist Church and other Christian churches. The name Honiara derives from "nagho ni ara" which roughly translates as "place of the east wind" or "facing the southeast wind" in one of the Guadalcanal languages. The town has not been extensively documented and little detailed material exists on it. The Battle of Henderson Field (1942), the last of the three major land offensives conducted by the Japanese during the Guadalcanal Campaign of World War II took place in what is now the airport area about to the east of the city