Columban Fr Tom Rouse with parishioners after Sunday Mass in New Zealand. Photo:St Columbans Mission Society
Outreach to migrants and refugees was a mission priority that emerged out of last year’s General Assembly of the St Columbans Mission Society.
As I reflect on how we in Aotearoa-New Zealand are living out this mission priority, I would like to look back at how things have changed in my country and how this priority has come to make sense.
Throughout my childhood, we spoke of just two groups of people making up the population of New Zealand, Māori and Pakeha, and the Pakeha population was largely of British or Irish descent. The Anglican church was by far the predominant church, and almost everyone was Christian of one denomination or another. Everyone spoke English with a few Māori words thrown in for good measure. We learnt to do the haka poorly. (The haka is the traditional Māori dance.) We did not learn Māori in school and learnt more about the history of England than we did about the history of our own country. What we did learn about the history of New Zealand was very much slanted in favour of the British colonisers, who, in contrast to those who built penal colonies in Australia, were said to have treated Māori so well.
Over the past 50 years or so, critical thinking and political events, like the land marches and the anti-apartheid demonstrations, have forced many of us to reread the history of Aotearoa-New Zealand. This included recognising the Treaty of Waitangi as a foundational document of our country and hearing the painful narratives of colonisation and racial oppression. This narrative included the fact that Māori fed the early settlers and, during an early period of colonisation, Māori were more literate than the European colonists, thanks to the efforts of the early Christian missionaries. Slowly, the Waitangi Tribunal has been trying to redress the impact and cost of land confiscations. It wasn’t until 1987 that Māori was made an official language of Aotearoa. We also slowly became aware that Māori had not been treated so well at all.
Migration has contributed to the enormous changes in Aotearoa-New Zealand. The diversity of cultures is such that government documents and pamphlets, for example, the road code, are available in a wide range of languages. The reason why the Catholic church has grown in numbers, unlike all the other Christian denominations, is that many recent migrants from the Pacific, the Philippines and India are Catholics.
The challenge for us as Columbans of this region is to ensure hospitality towards recent migrants. As a member of the Archdiocesan Migrant Advisory Group, I am involved in advising the archdiocese on what can be done to help migrants feel more at home. I am aware that, for many migrants, the one place where they find solace during those initial months of grappling with living in an alien and sometimes hostile or unfamiliar environment is the church. So, we bear an important responsibility for helping these people find a new home in Aotearoa-New Zealand.
It is a strange situation. While acknowledging the oftentimes disgraceful manner in which our European ancestors failed to show gratitude for the hospitality of Māori, we are called upon to follow the example of Māori in giving support to the recent migrants to our country. There are New Zealanders who refuse to believe that we owe anything to Māori and oppose the efforts to repay Māori for all that was taken from them in the past, including the revival of the Māori language and culture. In the same vein, many of these people express dismay at the increasing diversity of cultures and languages, cultures and religions that are adding colour and vitality to the social landscape of Aotearoa.
Here again, we as New Zealand Columbans, with our long overseas experience of living and working among people of other cultures and languages and experiencing their hospitality, can help to ensure that we make “outreach to migrants and refugees” a mission priority for Columbans in Aotearoa-New Zealand.
Fr Tom Rouse, Regional Counsellor Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Related links
- Read more from the current Columban eBulletin
