WelCom June/July 2024
Telesia Alaimoana celebrated her recent completion of Te Hao Nui-Launch Out lay leadership programme, at a Mass and reception at her St Pius X Church, Our Lady of Hope Parish, Titahi Bay, on Saturday 11 May.
Launch Out is the formation programme for lay leaders in the Wellington Archdiocese. Established in 2001, the programme prepares candidates to be lay pastoral leaders or lay ecclesial ministers. Candidates undertake several years of formation and study.
Supporting Telesia at her celebration day were members of her family, the Samoan Mother’s Group, her parish community, the Launch Out community and friends.
The event was the first of its kind for a Launch Out graduate. It began with Mass celebrated by Archbishop Paul Martin sm and concelebrated with Fr Penese Patelesio. The Samoan choir led the singing and Telesia’s family were the proclaimers. Two current Launch Out candidates, Jude McKee and Bernadette Patelesio, and Launch Out graduate Mary Ann Greaney, read the prayers of the faithful.
Archbishop Paul’s homily described Launch Out as developing leadership as ‘not just about skills and knowledge’, but about ‘transformed hearts touched by a true and deep relationship with God’.
At her festive reception after Mass, Telesia described to the guests how Launch Out has changed her from ‘dragon to peacemaker’. ‘It was an eight-year long and painful journey of learning about myself,’ she said, ‘listening to people, recognising my weaknesses and being more aware of the presence of God in my life.’
She paid tribute to her pastoral mentors, her spiritual directors and other guests from the archdiocese, as well as her family and especially her husband Simati, for their longstanding support. She also thanked Launch Out’s former manager Joan McFetridge and Cardinal John Dew who were unable to attend.
Telesia completed the programme from 2015 to 2023. Through Te Kupenga-Catholic Theological College, she studied a New Zealand Certificate and a Diploma in Christian Studies, and two papers in Pastoral Counselling and Liturgy in the Bachelor of Divinity. She has been the first candidate to take on bachelor’s degree papers in Theology.
Telesia plans to continue her involvement in Our Lady of Hope Parish and the Samoan Mothers’ Group. She is a social worker in the disability sector and plans use what she has learned from Launch Out to minister to the elderly with disabilities in residential care facilities in Wellington.
Thirty-eight candidates have gone through the programme since 2002. Te Hao Nui-Launch Out has produced Lay Pastoral Leaders who have worked among various Catholic organisations and chaplaincies in the archdiocese. Several graduates have worked in senior chaplaincy roles for the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference and some have been invited to work in other dioceses.
Please email Maya Bernado, the programme’s current formator and manager, at m.bernardo@wn.catholic.org.nz or visit tinyurl.com/Launch-Out to learn more about the programme.
Source: Launch Out Letters
