I have spent the weekend in the Philippines (Manila and Cebu) and today head home to NZ. The brief visit was an opportunity to meet with friends in both cities and to...
Philippines
Filipino evangelists
In the parish of the Good Shepherd, Hurunui, a significant number of our parishioners have arrived here in recent years from the Philippines. Their presence is a great...
present reality
Our gathering for the Spiritual Exercises continues today after a full Friday evening and Saturday. Late in April more than 25.000 people met in Rimini (on the Adriatic...
NZ speaks in Rome
I picked up a copy of the Vatican Newspaper yesterday and was not surprised to see an interview with Cardinal John Dew. Pope Francis is attracted to peripheries and New...
a Saturday…
The Catholic communities of the Hurunui district are small and spread around a large rural hinterland. Since my arrival in the parish just over three years ago the...
Filipino farewell
Yesterday the Philippines farewelled Pope Francis after three remarkable days of friendship. It is worth searching the visit online for some of the video clips and...
loss & hope
When I passed St. Joseph's Papanui yesterday morning there was very little remaining of the church building, just the doors through which so many have passed seeking...
Filipino faith
Pope Francis is in the Philippines today and over the past couple of hours he has been celebrating the first Mass of his three-day visit in the Cathedral Basilica of...
pressing on
Late last week I arrived in the Philippines for a series of retreats / spiritual exercises with communities in General Santos, Manila and Cebu. Yesterday I completed...
Philippines – light a candle
In the last few minutes news reports have estimated that the death toll in yesterday's Philippines Typhoon is in the vicinity of 10.000 people. A number of readers of...
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in the field
Such wise people have reflected on their life experience enough to know that while a peaceful and perfect day is welcome, we are most connected with others and therefore with God (we could also say most connected with God and therefore with others), when we live a struggle together.
FFF the book
Every day I am with people who may have once been baptised but now feel a distance between themselves and the Church and God. We are these people, as are too many of our family, friends, neighbours and workmates. This book therefore is for us.
church beauty
We call things beautiful when they reveal to us their inner essence, their reality as understood in the mind of God
All Souls
By looking at the graves, before which countless memories return, we remember how they lived, what they loved
revolutionaries
On this feast of All Saints in 1541 Michaelangelo‘s Last Judgement was unveiled on the rear wall of the Sistine Chapel.