Church prepares to mark Support Life Sunday
Catholics in Aotearoa New Zealand are being encouraged to recognise and respond with faith to issues that challenge God’s vision for a flourishing world this Support Life Sunday.
The Church marks Support Life Sunday on the second Sunday in October each year. In the Jubilee Year of Hope, there is a special opportunity to consider how to overcome understandable, but demoralising, feelings of hopelessness.
Bishops Conference vice president Bishop Michael Dooley reiterated what the New Zealand bishops have highlighted in recent years – that one does not need to look far to recognise that the world is in need of healing.
“As we pointed out in Te Kahu o te Ora, we experience divisions that are the result of human behaviours and institutions,” Bishop Dooley said.
“We see abortion rates on the rise in New Zealand and there are increasing attempts to expand access to euthanasia while palliative care funding remains inadequate. People continue to suffer financially; they struggle to access healthy food, safe housing and health care.
“Globally, our world is being fractured and ravaged through wars, conflicts and climate disasters. The dignity of persons and of our common home is under threat in multiple ways. Taking time to prayerfully focus on our need to support life this weekend is a small but important step towards making a difference through action.”
In addition to being a Jubilee Year, this year’s Support Life Sunday resources highlight various significant Church documents that have milestone anniversaries.
Fifty years ago, St Paul VI published his encyclical on the evangelisation of the world, Evangelii Nuntiandi, and wrote that “it is impossible [that] one could or should ignore the importance of the problems ... concerning justice, liberation, development and peace in the world”.
Thirty years ago, St John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae highlighted the need to “offer this world of ours new signs of hope and work to ensure that justice and solidarity will increase and that a new culture of human life will be affirmed”.
And 10 years ago, Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si’ that “we are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental”.
Bishop Dooley noted the ongoing relevance of the three documents for the Church of today.
“We are called to be people who share the message of Jesus Christ, we must support the value of every human life and our care for creation is a way for us to care for the one who created the world,” he said.
“On this Support Life Sunday, Catholics – and all people of good will – have the chance to think of those demands on us, and consider how we can respond more faithfully, sustained as we are by the hope that comes from faith.”
Resources for Support Life Sunday 2025 can be found at: https://catholic.org.nz/resources/