Complex sentence: Despite the lack of a resident priest to regularly perform mass, the Rapanui had returned to Roman Catholicism, but there remained some tension between temporal and spiritual power as Father Roussel disapproved of Salmon because of his Jewish paternity.
Split into simpler sentences: Despite the lack of a resident priest to regularly perform mass, the Rapanui had returned to Roman Catholicism. But there remained some tension between temporal and spiritual power as Father Roussel disapproved of Salmon because of his Jewish paternity.