May 2014 Palmerston North Gwen Mardle On Sunday 23 March St Peter Chanel parish hosted a lunch after Mass for seasonal workers in the area. Hastings being the traditional ‘fruit bowl’ of New Zealand, there is always a high demand for orchard workers over the summer and autumn. Most workers come from the Pacific Islands […]
May 2014 Palmerston North Teresa Neilson On Friday 4 April the children of St Mary’s School Hastings accepted the annual challenge of eating a handful of rice for lunch to benefit the Caritas appeal for the people of the Solomon Islands. The pupils of St Mary’s have followed this practice for the past 15 years […]
May 2014 Schools At least one seven or eight year old in Mrs Ania Davidson’s class at St Brendan’s School Heretaunga declares that his teacher is the ‘love of my heart’. James D says she has helped him be ‘more confident with my learning’ and is, from Abbey, ‘the most amazing teacher in my life!’ […]
News April 2014 Cecily McNeill Would the two-and-a-half million visitors to New Zealand each year give such glowing accounts of the country on their return home if they knew that a third of the 600,000 people living in poverty were children? Archbishop John Dew put this question to a large crowd gathered in Parliament grounds […]
Opinion April 2014 Archbishop John Dew ‘Holiness, a message that convinces without the need for words, is the living reflection of the face of Christ’. Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte (At the Beginning of the New Millennium). These words have always appealed to me, challenged me and inspired me to try to be […]
News April 2014 Cecily McNeill The New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services CEO Trevor McGlinchey told the gathering members working at the grassroots of social services say their communities aren’t feeling the impact of New Zealand’s ‘rock star economy’. Instead they are seeing: Families who don’t have enough resources – the queues to get […]
News April 2014 Mgr Gerard Burns who is a member of the Archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commission which orgaanised the picnic, explained the significance of numbers in The Bible. The feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle that appears in all four gospels. It is the inspiration behind this picnic. In the story as […]
News April 2014 A group of hardy souls braved Wellington’s stormy weather on Ash Wednesday for a service opposite the Stock Exchange to focus on the juxtaposition of short-term profits and social values. Before distributing ashes, Mgr Gerard Burns assured listeners that a stock exchange was not intrinsically evil. ‘It can be a way of […]
Opinion April 2014 Cecily McNeill The date of the next general election is set for 20 September and we must all start thinking about who we want to represent us at the highest levels. For many an election is a tedious business and voter apathy abounds. Fuelling this ennui may be a lack of knowledge […]
Scripture April 2014 Kieran Fenn fms Much of content in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary originates in the Old Testament. In this prayer, which Pope Sixtus V approved in 1587, Mary can be perceived in the shadow of the people and institutions of the OT. Abraham’s faith constitutes the beginning of the Old […]