WelCom is the monthly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Wellington. Print copies of the eight-page newsletter are free and available in parishes, and sent to parishes and schools in PDF form. The archive contains WelCom stories published from 2007 to 2026 (May).
WelCom May 2019: Pope Francis has urged young people to embrace their role as the present and the future of the Catholic Church by building relationships with their community and with God. His latest apostolic exhortation was signed on 25 March and released 2 April 2019, following last year’s Synod of Bishops on Young People, the […]
WelCom May 2019: The month of May is a special time to honour our Blessed Mother Mary. Marian devotions may include singing Marian hymns, readings, homilies, and reciting the rosary. In his 1951 encyclical Ingruentium malorum Pope Pius XI wrote: The custom of the family recitation of the Holy Rosary is a most efficacious means. What […]
WelCom May 2019: ‘Jesus puts peace into our hearts so that in turn we can give it to others.’ Cardinal John Dew, Archbishop of Wellington In mid-April Pope Francis met at the Vatican with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Justin Welby [principal leader of the Church of England, symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and bishop […]
WelCom May 2019: Bishop Charles Drennan, Bishop of Palmerston North Leadership and purpose or kaupapa are hot topics in the Church at the moment. That should not surprise us. The Church is by nature perennis reformatio, and naturally enough some people are more attracted to the brake and others to the accelerator. But that pedal metaphor can […]
WelCom May 2019: Peter Thirkell, Secretary of the Care Alliance, welcomed the Justice Select Committee’s statement that the End of Life Choice Bill ‘is not workable in its present state’. The Care Alliance position regarding the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide, agreed by all its member organisations (who include all of the major providers of […]
WelCom May 2019: Dr John Kleinsman, Director of The New Zealand Catholic Bioethics Centre The long-awaited Justice Select Committee Report on David Seymour’s End of Life Choice Bill was finally presented to Parliament on Tuesday 9 April. Critically, the Committee, having heard more than 38,700 submissions of which more than 90 per cent were opposed, ‘were unable […]
WelCom May 2019: Cardinal John Dew’s invitation to rethinking how we use our church and parish building and how we go about the ‘work’ of church is a spirit-filled invitation. Nevertheless, there is an impact on people when a church is destroyed or badly damaged, as with the churches in Sri Lanka’s recent bombings and the […]
WelCom May 2019: The annual day of prayer for Vocations is on Sunday 12 May, the 4th Sunday of Easter. It is also known as Good Shepherd Sunday. Alfred Tong, an Archdiocese of Wellington seminarian, shares his call to vocation story. ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood’. I never knew these were the beginnings of […]
WelCom May 2019: Catholics around the world watched with horror as the roof of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral was engulfed with flames on Monday 15 April 2019. The fire broke out as the cathedral was being renovated. Flames tore through the 860-year-old cathedral’s timbered roofing destroying the roof and spire. The following day, firefighters said the […]
WelCom May 2019: Catholic Church tackles destruction of ‘the lungs of the world’ The Amazon rainforest absorbs carbon for the entire planet, produces more than 20 per cent of the world’s oxygen and is being destroyed by deforestation and climate change. As carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, humanity is choking its own oxygen supply. In […]