Decades of ministry to young Catholics recognised with award

The Delargey Awards acknowledge significant and outstanding contributions made in the field of Catholic ministry with young people in Aotearoa New Zealand. They are named in honour of Cardinal Reginald Delargey.

Dr Duthie-Jung has been involved in youth and young adult ministry leadership since the 1990s. He has worked on a range of projects at the local, parish, archdiocesan and national level.

He has supported, mentored and walked alongside many young adults, encouraging them to make informed decisions in order to be the best version of themselves that God created them to be.

From one-on-one pastoral care and leadership development with young people themselves, through to strong advocacy for young people, Dr Duthie-Jung has shown true dedication to this ministry for decades.

Currently the director of Church Mission at Wellington Archdiocese, Dr Duthie-Jung said receiving the award was “a complete surprise” and “very humbling”.

Looking back on his service in this ministry, Dr Duthie-Jung said that “the youth and young adult formation work has been extremely rewarding over the years”.

“Putting so many young people through various long-running programmes (Leadership Formation Programme, Young Catholic Leader . . .) and watching them thrive and move on into leadership with a new understanding of discipleship has been its own reward,” he said.

The fact that so much is being done online today is a major change from his early years in this ministry.

“Social media, with its plusses and minuses, has changed so much of how we operate,” he said.

Another change is in the demographics of Church congregations over the years, so that today “we have the whole world represented in almost every parish”.

“The richness of the experience is vastly more broad, and with it comes the challenges of inclusion that can be truly daunting,” he said.

Dr Duthie-Jung attended several World Youth Days, and was co-leader of the Archdiocese of Wellington pilgrimage to World Youth Day in Cologne in 2005. He was the national leader of the thousands of young Kiwis who attended World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008.

In 2012, he completed a doctorate titled Faith Amid Secularity: Qualitative research into faith experiences of young people.

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Decades of ministry to young Catholics recognised with award – New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference