Opinion March 2014 Fr Kevin Neal The days we’ve been having lately in the Manawatu have been glorious. The sun is shining brightly and people of every description are parading around town. Young and old wait patiently at the traffic lights in their small gangs. The older people have lists on their mind and they […]
News March 2014 A year of celebrations of St Brigid’s Parish began on 1 February, the feast day of its sixth century Irish patron. The Feilding parish turns 125. Although the first Catholic Church was built in Feilding in 1885 it was another four years before it became a separate parish. St Brigid’s has organised […]
Schools March 2014 Hāto Pāora College and St Joseph Māori Girls College have both opened the new academic year with rolls well up on last year. Hāto Pāora Principal Debbie Marshall-Lobb says the pōwhiri marking the new term was by far the largest in her time as principal and admissions of new boys were still […]
Feature March 2014 Fr Bernie O’Donnell On a dark Christmas Eve, 2013 a group of people met at the Tangiwai Memorial by the Whangaehu River to remember those who died tragically there 60 years earlier. The weather was similar to the light rain on that night in 1953 when the Wellington-Auckland Express train went into […]
World March 2014 Anne-Marie McCarten The St Vincent de Paul Society has asked members around the world to join in solidarity in the wake of the powerful typhoon that struck Tacloban, capital city of Leyte province, in the Central Philippines on 8 November 2013. International President General Dr Michael Thio, made the request on 13 […]
World March 2014 Cecily McNeill The story of Bethlehem University is one of peace in the face of severe restrictions. The vice-chancellor of the university, Br Peter Bray, told a gathering in Mt Victoria last month that, until 12 years ago, the 40-year-old university had students from Ramallah in the north of Jerusalem. ‘But since […]
Obituary March 2014 Wel-Com records with regret the passing of a valued colleague and friend Fr Brian O’Connell sm who, until recently, had been editor of the Marist Messenger, a role he took on in 2005. Fr Brian died peacefully in the Home of Compassion Silverstream on 13 January, after years of living with Motor […]
Feature March 2014 John O’Neill sm The number of people in the Wellington region who ticked the ‘no religion’ box in the 2013 Census rose by 15 percent in the seven years since the previous census. At the same time the number who said in the census that they were Catholic declined by six percent […]
Palmerston North March 2014 Kathleen Field The Young Catholic Leader programme in the Diocese of Palmerston North continues to grow in popularity and diversity. Begun in the diocese in 2011 with 29 Year 12 students from Catholic colleges, it has grown to 52 young people at last December’s camp, five of whom were from nonCatholic […]
News February 2014 Mary-Ann Greaney Dynamic ministry teams with priests and lay leaders working together could be the result of the archdiocesan restructuring now taking place following extensive parish consultations last year based on the document A Future Full of Hope. When Bishop John Dew was installed as archbishop in 2005 he knew he couldn’t […]