Vicar Demands Racial Equality

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30056, 14 February 1963, Page 16

Vicar Demands Racial Equality

(New Zealand Press Association)

WANGANUI, February 13. “I have not come here to kick anybody about, and I have not come here to be kicked about,” said the new vicar of St. Paul’s Memorial Church, Putiki, the Rev. K. Elliott, V.C., tonight, at a reception after his institution and induction into the parish.

Mr Elliott began his reply to speeches of welcome by saying: “I am not going to trust myself to speak tonight, because if I do I think I might do the church a disservice.”

The first pakeha pastor in the parish for 30 years, Mr Elliott said: “We have to settle our communications

and our policy between bishops. One says one thing, and one says another.” “I have eotne here for one main reason and that is to gather in souls for Christ. “I have come here to work among them and to gather them in the name of the Father, the Son and the HolyGhost.

"I have come here to serve

the Maori people in sincerity and in faith, and I am going to do it. "I have suffered enough lashes across the face from high clergy and from Pontius Pilate who sat beside them. “I can see now why the Church of England is failing in its mission,” he said. (Recent figures suggested that the Church of England was losing ground to the Roman Catholic Church).

Mr Elliott said New Zealand would have to watch its sincerity, or the Commonwealth would disintegrate as had the Roman Empire. “I have been to dine with the Queen, and I have heard Prime Ministers and others say that our people are all one.

"They may be when the Queen is here.

“Did they say it when the Maoris were going to South Africa? ” Mr Elliott appealed for unity between pakeha and Maori, failing which the Church of England should get out of the mission altogether, and leave them to other religions which were getting stronger. “I pray sincerely that pakeha and Maori will worship together in Sit. Paul’s of Putiki,” he said.