He estimates that up to 30 per cent of his regular congregation are from the Filipino community.

With the launch of the Southland Regional Development Strategy this year, this trend may accelerate.

To reach the goal of attracting 10,000 people to the region by 2025, workers from immigrant communities are being heavily targeted.

The majority of these migrants would likely come from Asia and the Pacific.

Along with other churches Catholic Church has been dealing problems of declining attendance.

But the growth of Southland's Filipino community has transformed many churches in the South.

O'Neill says the new migrants have brought "a lot of energy and enthusiasm" to the church.

"They're a lot younger, the people who do come - and they bring their children along as well."

"People in their 30s and 40s is a demographic we are missing out on [with New Zealand born people]."

"It's having quite an effect on the people who are already here, they have done us a lot of good."

Since last November, the Diocese of Dunedin has been celebrating monthly Filipino-language masses around Otago and Southland.

The decision to hold the Tagalog masses was the idea of Reverend Fredy Permentilla, himself a Filipino priest working in Gore.

Permentilla celebrates the masses in Winton, Invercargill, Dunedin, and Queenstown.

He said that for many Filipinos "there is a longing to hear the mass in their own language".

Permentilla arrived in New Zealand in 2012, as part of an initiative of the Mission Society of the Philippines.

Source

• www.stuff.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: resources.stuff.co.nz
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The annual tradition that combines Catholic religious rites with the country's penchant for festivity is popularly called "Undas" or Day of the Dead, a major family affair in the Philippines.

In honor of All Saints' and All Souls' Day on November 1 and 2, tombs are cleaned and repainted, candles are lit and flowers are offered.

Families camped overnight, pitched up tents and brought in food for a day-long All Saint's Day picnic by the graves and tombs of their dead.

In crowded public cemeteries in Metro Manila, police confiscated alcoholic beverages and banned gambling to maintain peace and order.

Hundreds of medics and volunteers also set up field clinics to provide medical assistance. Radio reports said many had fainted due to the extreme heat in densely packed cemeteries.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, meanwhile warned the public against fake priests roaming the cemeteries and reciting prayers for unsuspecting families in exchange for monetary donations.

And for millions of Catholic Filipinos overseas who could not come home to visit their dead, the bishops put up a special portal where they could log on and request special prayers and masses.

UCA News quoted Monsignor Pedro Quitorio III, media office director of the bishops' conference, as saying that the service is for Filipinos who work abroad for them to feel that they are also in the cemetery on All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.

"That's the purpose of the photos of the cemetery, so that our overseas workers can pray for their departed loved ones by just looking at the photos," he said.

The service received 20,000 requests and garnered "positive feedback" last year from Filipinos around the world.

Sources

• AFP/Asia One
• UCA News
• Singapore Straits Times
• Image: Getty Images/i4u.com