OUR CHURCHES: KING COUNTRY / TAILA BURTON-GOLLOP

OUR CHURCHES: KING COUNTRY

TAILA BURTON-GOLLOP

This is a series featuring different churches around our diocese.

St George’s Parish was established in Te Kuiti in the early years of the twentieth century to be to be a place of worship for all Catholics in the district. In 1909, a parish was established in Te Awamutu which included Te Kuiti. In 1915 (until 1946), Te Kuiti became a separate parish which included Otorohanga and Piopio. The Mill Hill Fathers from Holland, Ireland and England were placed in Aria and surrounding areas until Diocesan clergy were available. Now the parish is included in the wider Te Awamutu parish once again.

Otorohanga’s Our Lady of the Sacred Heart church, established in 1945.

There is also one more church in this Amalgamating Parish of State Highway 3 (not featured in this spread) - and it is actually nowhere near State Highway 3! Our Lady of the Rosary sits in a paddock near the community hall and the primary school in Arohena. Mass is currently not said there and information about the church is hard to find, but we thought it deserved an honourable mention nonetheless.

St Peter’s in Kawhia was blessed and opened on the 23rd of March, 1930 by Bishop Liston. The parish priest was Fr E.B. Schoonhof, M.H.M., then stationed at Kihikihi. The church was built by Messrs Schultz, McMonagle and Scott with the help of other parishioners. The cost of the building was £500 and the church was opened free of debt.