A recent meeting of the Aotearoa New Zealand Mixed Commission of Bishops and Religious Leaders focused on synodality, its tradition within Pacific cultures, and its possibilities as a means of listening to the voices of the marginalised and caring for our common home.

Australian Provincial Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, co-facilitated the meeting which was held from February 18-19 in Auckland, sharing some of the insights he gained from being a small group facilitator at the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality in Rome.

The Te Awakairangi Parish in the Lower Hutt region of New Zealand’s Wellington Archdiocese is a large, culturally rich and diverse parish where the people are warm and welcoming and committed to a missionary outlook which is deeply grounded in the primacy of evangelisation.

Established in 2015, the parish is comprised of four churches and has been in the pastoral care of the Divine Word Missionaries since January 2024.

Three SVD missionaries who have recently arrived in the Archdiocese of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, have begun a year-long induction program for incoming clergy from overseas, called ‘Landing the Waka’.

Fathers Akuila Taliauli SVD, Raja Kommareddy SVD and Uili Uvea SVD joined Fr Ravi Kumar Voliganti and Fr Nicholas Phone Myint MF (Myanmar) in the program which was hosted by Church Mission staff and Vicar General Mons Gerard Burns, for a three-day retreat at the Magnificat Centre in Cross Creek, South Wairarapa.

The Divine Word Missionaries Australia Province has extended its commitment to being present in New Zealand and is ready to respond to any requests by bishops to provide more confreres as needed.

Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, undertook a Provincial Visitation to New Zealand earlier this month, and said he was “very impressed” by the ministry of the four confreres who are currently assigned there.

Fr Alejandro de la Sotta SVD arrived in New Zealand to take up his new post of chaplain to Auckland’s Latino community on March 17 – two days before the nation’s borders closed and people were ordered to stay at home to try and beat the coronavirus.

“I arrived, and a week later, the government announced a national quarantine,” he says.

There’s nothing like adversity to bring people together, and the parishioners of Holy Spirit Parish in the Archdiocese of Wellington, New Zealand, know this only too well, having enjoyed the ecumenical hospitality of their Anglican neighbours since their church was damaged by earthquake.

Fr Dom Flores SVD, who spent the first three months of this year working in the parish, says this ecumenical spirit was one of the many highlights of his time in New Zealand.