WelCom June 2018:
Michael McCabe
Our Lady of Kāpiti parishioners gathered recently to consider the concept drawings for their new Parish Church and Centre. These buildings are to be built adjacent to Our Lady of Kāpiti School, blessed and opened by Cardinal John Dew on the feast of St Patrick 2017.
Our Lady of Kāpiti Parish combines the former parishes of St Patrick’s in Paraparaumu and Our Lady of Fatima in Waikanae and the former Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Paekakariki. In 2013 it was the first parish to accept Cardinal Dew’s invitation to amalgamate and to ‘build a future full of hope’. Its subsequent Pastoral Plan anticipated a number of the central themes in the recent Archdiocesan Synod, ‘Go You Are Sent.’
The new Church and Parish Centre has been designed by DLA Architects, Architects for the St Joseph’s Church in Hawera and the annexe to the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Palmerston North. Construction is expected to begin early in 2019 after the necessary archdiocesan and civic consents.
John O Sullivan, Chair of the Parish Redevelopment Steering Group, told parishioners that the ‘Church and Parish Centre must be affordable, buildable, maintainable, modest and welcoming’. He also said that in our Parish Redevelopment of School, Church and Centre, Our Lady of Kāpiti hoped to provide ‘a model to assist other parishes’ in their journeys of faith and Parish projects.
Fr Michael McCabe is parish priest at Our Lady of Kāpiti.