Mission and migration

Members of the Fiji Catholic community of the Archdiocese of Wellington with Archbishop Paul Martin at the mass celebrated on the feast of Corpus Christi. Photo: Fr Tom Rouse.

For the first time in New Zealand history over half the population declared that they do not believe in any religion. The 2023 census revealed that 51.6 per cent of New Zealanders have no religion.

Over 77.5 per cent of religious people in New Zealand are Christian. Almost 290,000 claimed to be Catholic. We are the largest Christian group. But still, we are only 5.8% of the population.

There was a recent article in the local paper about the decline in religion in Aotearoa-New Zealand. While it was exploring why so few New Zealanders profess faith in any kind of religion, there was a brief account of an interview with a migrant woman from Sri Lanka. She is a Catholic. She and her family maintain their religious faith, saying their traditional Catholic prayers each day and going to church on Sundays.

Of all people from Sri Lanka who live in New Zealand, about 15% are Catholic. They are among the various migrant communities that contribute to the size of the Catholic population. According to the census, 59% of the present Catholic population were born overseas. This is by far the largest percentage of any Christian denomination. What’s more, 41 % of Catholics were born in Asia. When you look around at any Sunday congregation, it is apparent that many are from the Philippines, India and the Pacific.

This is also evident in our own small eucharistic community here at St Columban’s Grove, Lower Hutt. The faith and piety of these migrant communities is impressive. Some admit that, in coming to New Zealand, the one place where they could initially feel most at home was the church.

However, there is a further reason why I have been reflecting upon the ethnic character of the local Catholic community. In the latest copy of the International Bulletin of Mission Research (July 2024), a major theme is “mission and migration”. There is clear evidence that the future of mission rests to a large extent with migrant communities. In the future, what will attract New Zealanders to explore and reflect upon belief in Jesus Christ is the enthusiasm and commitment of young migrant families.

Upon further reflection, I think that this relates to how the work of Columban mission was carried out over the past 100 years. We were migrants or “foreign missionaries”. We were made to feel at home among people who were not our own. We learnt their languages, adapted to their cultures and came to realise that the people among whom we thought we were taking the gospel had a lot to teach us about what it meant to be missionary disciples of Jesus Christ within the Catholic tradition.

To use the language of the past, New Zealand is a missionary territory. As Jesus said, “The harvest is rich, but the labourers are few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into the harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38)

This finally brings me to one of the priorities that emerged from our recent Columban General Assembly—outreach to migrants and refugees. Maybe, in places like here in Aotearoa-New Zealand, it is we who need them rather than they who need us if the missionary work is to continue. Then again, should we talk about “we” and “them”? After all, we are all migrants who have received the call to go out and bring Good News to the nations.

Fr Tom Rouse - Regional Councillor of Oceania, lives and works in Aotearoa/New Zealand.