Wahi Tapu - Sacred Spaces

New Zealand is blessed with many sacred places that the faith and our whanau history has to share and encourage us in our hikoi through life.
Aove is the place (totara point where Bishop Pompallier said the first mass in Aotearoa in 1838. The Marist Fathers and Brothers travelled all over the country as have many other religious orders. 

For example what do you know of Saint Mary Mckillop in Rotorua? Or her cottage in Arrowtown? What about the life of the first Māori Catholic Priest Fr Wiremu Te Awhitu?

Bishop Pompallier also visited Dunedin and Otakou including Moeraki where he spent 6 days. Anderson's Bay where the Taranaki prisoners were kept in the caves were ministered to by a Catholic Priest and Catholics were among those injustly imprisoned.  

Fr. Wiremu Te Awhitu First Māori Catholic priest

Moeraki Marae, Otago, South Island, New Zealand - Pompalier spent 6 days here sharing knowledge with the rangatira at the time. 

Totara Point Monument, Northland where the first Mass in New Zealand was prayed.

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Saint Mary Helen MacKillop RSJ (15 January 1842 – 8 August 1909) founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. She opened schools and attracted sisters to her work here in New Zealand. Mary Mckillop Cottage used the cottage and later used it for a convent for her sisters. it can be visited to day in Arrowtown, South Island, New Zealand

Te Runanga visit the Rongo monument in Andersons Bay where Parihaka prisoners (without trial) were kept in a caves in Otepoti, Dunedin. Taranaki Iwi research indicates up to 500 prisoners and whanau tautoko died in the caves due to illness, or on their return to Taranaki.

Jean Claude Colin - Marist Fathers. Marist Brothers and Fathers were a significant part of Catholic Church history in New Zealand