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Otarta Parish Otara is a suburb in South Auckland, New Zealand that is well known for its cultural diversity. Otara also has one of the most famous Saturday Flea Market's in Auckland – if not in New Zealand – and thousands of people arrive out here every Saturday morning looking for bargains, veggies, and maybe something or other that could have fallen off a truck! The market is a must experience for anyone in Auckland! The mix of mainly Pacific cultures makes Otara a vibrant and colourful suburb and one sees that as a positive social profile in New Zealand today. On the down side, there is also a higher ratio of people in Otara – compared to other suburbs – who are unemployed and many families rely on benefits and social welfare to make ends meet. Other social and financial problems found in many South Auckland communities are also problems in Otara especially gambling, debt, domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, over-crowding. Otara has received a lot of negative media coverage nationwide, endorsing images and impressions from the film, Once Were Warriors, which was filmed around this area in the early 1990’s. The people and communities of Otara haven’t been given sufficient credit for the progress and positive social development, which is slowly changing this image. The Otara Marist Community is an inter-Provincial response by the Society of Mary in Oceania and New Zealand, to a request from the Bishop of Auckland. There are three members in the community for 2005: Kerry Prendeville (NZ), Pita Mo’onia (Tonga/Oceania) and Jack Ward (NZ). Fr Jack is our senior member and is semi-retired although the word “retirement” is not in Jack’s vocabulary! Fr Kerry had worked in the Pacific for most of his ministry, the last 12 years at the Pacific Regional Seminary in Suva. Fr Pita was ordained last December and Otara is his first appointment as a Marist on mission. The parish community reflects the ethnic mix of the suburban community and consists largely of Polynesian migrants to New Zealand: Samoan, Tongan and Cook Island families. The New Zealand Maori community along with the Fijian, Dutch, Asian and European communities form a minority presence in the parish. Many of the ethnic groups in Otara are still strongly attached to their culture of origin. While this attachment continues to nurture in a positive way the cultural identity of these people, it does create some tensions at the level of inter-group parish activities and cooperation. The average Parish Mass count is around 750. This may not be an accurate indication of those who attend Mass on Sunday, nor the parish roll, as on any given Sunday there are several ethnic Masses celebrated in the South Auckland area. In the Otara parish, there is a monthly parish mass celebrated in Samoan, Maori, Tongan and Cook Island languages. Our pastoral plan is still taking shape. From what we have experienced so far, our pastoral focus will be promoting parenting skills and family life, ministry with young people, along with an ongoing training programme for lay ministries in preparation for a church of the future with less a focus on priesthood and ordained ministry. The aspiration to build a strong multi-cultural faith community in the parish from so many strongly independent ethnic groups challenges both the presentation of a relevant theological model of being Church and the wisdom of Solomon. We have often wondered what the early Marist Missionaries to the Pacific would be saying today or if they could ever have envisaged their people leaving home to be confronted with a further stage of re-inculturation when they settled in New Zealand. The tension between gospel and culture – in all its various expressions – is probably the greatest ongoing challenge for Marists on mission in Otara.
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Parish Details PO Box 61115 Otara Auckland
Phone: 09 272-8237 Fax: 09 274-7320 |
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