Fr Don Hornsey with spanish speaking community. Photo: Fr Don Hornsey
When refugees arrive in Aotearoa, they spend the first six weeks in the Migrant Centre in Mangere, Auckland. They usually arrive in groups of about twenty families, and each group is assigned to a different city or town. The first group of Colombians that arrived in 2024 were settled in the Wellington area mainly in Hutt Valley and Porirua. Subsequent groups went to Nelson, Invercargill and most recently to Levin, 100 km north of Lower Hutt. Venezuelans are now arriving there also.
When I returned to New Zealand, I was asked to accompany those Colombians in the Wellington region. As they had only recently arrived with little knowledge of the language and culture, I was mainly occupied with taking them to Work and Income to learn about their government benefits, helping with their language courses, and enrolling in hospitals, opening bank accounts and often obtaining exemptions from fees for their children in Catholic schools.
Now things have changed, as they have become more integrated into the culture, have enough English to find jobs, and can do most things for themselves. Though I am still asked to act as a reference person, as in the last month, for a young Colombian to enter nursing school and for another family to apply for a house and passports.
But now I am mainly engaged in helping Spanish-speaking refugees and migrants come together as a community. Of course, they often do this themselves when they meet to celebrate birthdays or national anniversaries, but they feel a strong need to come together as a community to share their faith and pray and sing together in their own language. So, every Sunday here in the Columban chapel, we have a Spanish Mass. The main group are from Colombia, but there are also people from Mexico, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Honduras and recently Venezuela and the Dominican Republic.
I often ask myself how long we should keep on with the Spanish Mass, or should the people be encouraged to participate in their parishes. Some do, of course, but then I remember Pedro Casaldaliga, a wonderful bishop in the Amazon of Brazil. He said, ''I speak in Portuguese all day, and I do my writing in Spanish, but I pray in my own Basque language.'' South Americans are, by nature, community people, and even after years here, they still feel the need for Mass and the sacraments in their own language. After Mass on the last Sunday of the month, they come to my house, bringing food to share, and so far this year we had a picnic together, a meal in the house of one of the Colombians, and went to a concert together. But the big event is always the Christmas Novena, when up to 60 people get together for nine nights in different houses to pray, sing carols and share food together.
I thank God that although I am living in New Zealand, I still haven't left South America!
Fr Don Hornsey Lives and works in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Related links
- Read more from the current Columban eBulletin
