On Tuesday 14 May, the Archdiocese hosted a Parish Secretary’s Day at St Joseph’s Church, Mount Victoria. These events happen 1-2 times a year, run by our Church Mission team. The purpose of the gathering is to give Parish Secretaries the opportunity to network with one another, learn new skills and to hear first-hand about upcoming Archdiocesan activities.
Our Parish Secretaries are often the first point of contact for many people looking for information on Parish Mass times or church activities, or even the first point of contact for people wanting to connect with the Church at large. This particular day was also a special one because we had teams from our South Island Parishes attend in person too.
The speakers included; Kevin Plant, Safeguarding Coordinator who talked about his mahi developing the safeguarding programme in the Archdiocese, which he took over after Sr Catherine Jones retired; Simone Olsen, Marriage Ministries Coordinator, who talked about the Archdiocese’s marriage preparation programmes and resources that Secretaries could share with couples preparing for marriage; Jude McKee, Executive Assistant for the Archbishop’s Office, who often shares communications with Parish Secretaries to distribute within their Parishes and introduced herself; Elizabeth Berry, Privacy Officer who talked about themes of privacy week and keeping people safe; and Reuben Norris, General Manager who introduced himself and thanked everyone for their mahi.
There were also two tutorial sessions; Veronika Duthie-Jung led a session on Xero, an accounts management software and Richard Smith led a session on Infoodle, a Charity CRM software so that Secretaries could be kept up to date with different software options to support them in their roles and to take back to their Parishes with new knowledge about opportunities to streamline the processes.
Archbishop Paul also joined the Secretaries for lunch and thanked them for their contributions. Roshan Abeysundre, Director of Finance and Louise Lloyd Young Church Coordinator were also present for the day.
