I lived through 14 years of terrorism in Peru, and witnessed the flying bullets and massacred youth lying in pools of blood on the sidewalks in my barrios in Venezuela. However, living here in Brownsville, it fails comprehension that the most powerful country in the world which promotes itself as the watchdog for human rights Read more
Three generations of Kiwis ‘down the road’, it dawned on me that not only am I from a migrant family but I too am also a migrant. 27 years in Peru; 5 years in Venezuela; a stint in Australia: 5 years here in the Rio Grande Valley on the border the USA with Mexico. Now Read more
“Who says men don’t cry?” is New Zealand Marist priest, Tony O’Connor’s initial reflection of ministering on the border of Mexico and the United States. Part of Fr O’Connor’s ministry, working in the Brownsville Texas parish, is to visit two detention centres, one for captured minor migrants and the other for captured adult migrants. Given their personal circumstance and Read more
A wall painting of St Peter Chanel is not the only sign that Kiwis have been in Venezuela. Fr Tony O’Connor, a New Zealand Marist priest, will soon be leaving Flor Amarillo, Valencia, Venezuela. His departure will bring to an end 46 years of Marist work in the area. As well as Fr Tony, two Read more
A New Zealand priest, Tony O’Connor, is presently doing up a chapel dedicated to Saint Peter Chanel in Paso Real, Venezuela. Saint Peter Chanel might well be the Proto Martyr of Oceania, revered with affection in the Pacific and rightly so. But he also stepped on to the soil of South America when the first Read more