Latest news with #1News'
1News
07-05-2025
- Business
- 1News
Property: National average asking price drops in April
The average asking price for a property fell in April, the second monthly drop this year, according to new figures from Trade Me. According to Trade Me's Property Pulse Report, the average asking price for a property in April was $855,150, down 0.8% compared with March and 2.6% year-on-year. Auckland fell 1% compared with March - the biggest month-on-month decline in eight months. The average asking price was $1,046,900. Year-on-year, prices in Auckland are down 3.2%. 1News' Simon Mercep asked Trade Me Property customer director Gavin Lloyd what drove the dip. (Source: 1News) Trade Me Property customer director Gavin Lloyd said the drop was "somewhat typical" for this time of year and attributed it to seasonal fluctuations. 'Historically, as we move into the colder months of the year we see a dip in buyer activity, and this is reflected in the most recent data," he said. "House hunting is a lot more appealing when the sun is shining and properties look and feel their best." He described Auckland's prices as "consistently inconsistent", with prices experiencing a 10-month high in March, followed by the largest fall since August 2024 in April. 'After dipping below the million-dollar average last August, many will be keeping a watchful eye on the city of sails as to how things play out as we move closer to winter.' Lloyd said a level of "uncertainty" hovering over the market had also impacted prices. "It's just having that lingering impact on the confidence of people to come into the market." The number of days properties spent listed on Trade Me increased to 62 days in April from 56 in March. This still remained lower than Trade Me's previous average of 85 days in January. Lloyd said this likely had an impact on average asking prices. 'The rule of thumb is that the longer properties spend on the market, the more sellers need to adjust their expectations, particularly when it comes to price. This is especially true in a market where there's plenty of supply to choose from." The number of properties listed on Trade Me experienced a 4% drop between March and April. Demand also dropped 13% month-on-month. The biggest drops were on the West Coast (down 7%), Nelson/Tasman (down 7%), Canterbury (down 6%), Gisborne (down 6%), and Taranaki (down 6%). Lloyd said that while listings were down, buyers still had plenty of choice with "several thousand" more listings in April 2024 compared to April 2025. "That means buyers continue to have plenty of leverage and to secure a sale, vendors are going to need to meet the market, particularly in regards to realistic price expectations.'
1News
22-04-2025
- General
- 1News
NZ's Catholic community mourns death of Pope Francis
Catholic communities across New Zealand are mourning the death of His Holiness Pope Francis and will be holding special Masses in the coming days to allow people to pray. Pope Francis, who was elected to the papacy in March 2013 and became the first pope in a millennia from outside Europe, died on Monday evening (NZ time). The 88-year-old pontiff died of a stroke, followed by a coma and heart failure at his Santa Marta residence in the Vatican. Catholicism was the largest religious group in the country at the 2023 census, with more than 400,000 New Zealanders identifying with the faith. New Zealand-based Cardinal John Dew would head to Rome to attend the Pope's funeral and take part in the conclave process which will determine his successor. He was created and proclaimed Cardinal by Pope Francis on February 15, 2015. 1News' Europe Correspondent takes a look back at the Pope's life - watch on TVNZ+ Bishop of Auckland Steve Lowe told Breakfast he had received the news of Pope Francis' death with "real sadness" but also "a little bit of happy release". "His health hasn't been well, and like anyone elderly in the family, we don't like to see them suffer. He'd always worked tirelessly for the Lord and our hope is that he sees him face to face." The pope's leadership had been "very grassroots", Lowe said. Speaking to Breakfast, Bishop of Auckland Steve Lowe remembered Pope Francis as a "man of God who loved God's people". (Source: Breakfast) "He knew people who struggled and that's what he took into his pontificate. The commandment is to love God with all your heart, your neighbour as yourself. "I think Francis embodied those, but also he embodied the love of the creation of which we're a part." Lowe said Pope Francis was "down to earth" in the times he had met him and always had a "big smile". "He was a man of God who loved God's people." Lowe, who is also president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops conference, said one of Pope Francis' lasting legacies would be his encouragement for the church to be a "place of listening, of dialogue, and of discernment". "The Holy Father reminded us of the importance of walking together as the entire People of God – lay people, religious women and men, and clergy – following the path of Jesus. "New ways of engaging with one another and new styles of leadership have emerged and are emerging, and we will have Pope Francis to thank for much of that renewal." Catholic communities across New Zealand would be holding special Masses to allow people to pray for Pope Francis, Lowe said. "There is an obvious and an enduring connection that we Catholics have with Pope Francis, but we invite our Christian brothers and sisters, other people of faith and people who are searching to join us in lifting up our departed brother in prayer," he said. "In that sense, we are following the Church's practice of praying for any person who has died – albeit a Pope on this occasion." New Zealand's flag will fly at half-mast to mark the passing and funeral of Pope Francis. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage said Prime Minister Christopher Luxon asked for the New Zealand flag to be flown at half-mast on all government and public buildings. The instruction applies to all government departments, buildings and naval vessels which have flag poles and normally fly the New Zealand flag. Speaking to Breakfast, Christopher Luxon discussed his meeting with the King, his plans for his UK trip, and the death of Pope Francis. (Source: Breakfast) A flag is half-masted by first raising it to the top of the mast, and then immediately lowering it slowly to the half-mast position. The flags will return to full mast at on Wednesday at 5pm.
1News
22-04-2025
- Politics
- 1News
Pope Francis remembered for his humility, simplicity throughout papacy
The Associated Press takes an in-depth look at the life of Pope Francis following his death aged 88. He was a pope who understood the power of a simple touch: caressing the deformed head of a man in St Peter's Square, washing the feet of a Muslim prisoner, sinking to his hands and knees to implore South Sudan's rival leaders to make peace. Pope Francis charmed the world with those poignant acts of love, humility and informality, starting with his first appearance as pontiff on the loggia of St Peter's Basilica with a remarkably normal, 'Buonasera' ('Good evening') to his cheering flock below. Francis, the first Latin American pope, died Monday at age 88. It was just a day after Francis imparted what would become his final public blessing from that very same loggia on Easter. 'Brothers and Sisters, Happy Easter!' he said. 1News' Europe Correspondent Mei Heron takes a look back at the Pope's life - watch on TVNZ+ ADVERTISEMENT He suffered from chronic lung disease after part of a lung was removed as a young man. He entered Gemelli hospital on February 14, 2025, for a respiratory crisis that developed into double pneumonia, and at 38 days became the longest hospitalisation of his 12-year papacy. After his release, Francis led the church through the Easter season, and made what became a final farewell to the faithful with a ride in his popemobile through St Peter's Square following Easter Mass. After that first rainy night of his election on March 13, 2013, Francis made even greater gestures, like bringing a dozen Syrian refugees home with him from a Greek refugee camp. Such actions won him wild popularity among progressives and signalled new priorities for the Vatican after the sometimes-troubled papacy of Pope Benedict XVI. But Francis soon invited troubles of his own, and conservatives grew increasingly upset with his focus on the poor and the environment, and his outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics, at the expense of preaching Catholic doctrine. Some accused him of heresy. His greatest test came when he botched a notorious case of clergy sexual abuse in Chile in 2018. Suddenly, the scandal that festered under his predecessors erupted anew on his watch and was used by critics to try to weaken him. Pope Francis hugs 8-year-old Dominic Gondreau, who has cerebral palsy, after celebrating his first Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Sunday, March 31, 2013. (Source: Associated Press) And then the crowd-loving, globe-trotting pope of the peripheries had to navigate the unprecedented reality of leading a universal religion through the coronavirus pandemic from a locked-down Vatican City. He implored the world to use Covid-19 as an opportunity to rethink the economic and political framework that he said had turned rich against poor and rendered the Earth an 'immense pile of filth'. ADVERTISEMENT 'We have realised that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented… all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other,' Francis told an empty St. Peter's Square at the height of the outbreak in March 2020. Shaking up the church without changing core doctrines After Benedict's surprise resignation and retirement, Francis was elected on a mandate to reform the outdated Vatican bureaucracy and its finances, but he went much further in shaking up the church itself without ever changing its core doctrine. When asked about a purportedly gay priest, he replied: 'Who am I to judge?' Pope Francis waves to faithful as he is driven through the crowd during his visit to the island of Lampedusa, southern Italy, on July 8, 2013. (Source: Associated Press) The comment sent a message of welcome to the LGBTQ+ community and those who felt shunned by a church that had stressed conditions, rules and sexual propriety over unconditional love. 'Being homosexual is not a crime,' he told The Associated Press in 2023, calling for an end to civil laws that criminalise it. A year later, he approved church blessings for same-sex couples. ADVERTISEMENT In a similar, merciful line, Francis changed the church's position on the death penalty, declaring it inadmissible in all circumstances. And he modified its stand by saying the mere possession of nuclear weapons, not just their use, was 'immoral'. In other firsts, he approved an agreement with China over bishop nominations that had vexed the Vatican for a half-century, met with a Russian patriarch, and charted new relations with the Muslim world by visiting the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq. He reaffirmed the all-male, celibate priesthood and strongly upheld the church's opposition to abortion, equating it to 'hiring a hit man to solve a problem". But he added women to important decision-making roles in the Vatican and formally allowed them to serve as lectors and acolytes in parishes. He allowed women to vote alongside bishops in periodic Vatican meetings, following longstanding complaints that women do most of the church's work but are barred from its top echelons. Pope Francis prays at Israel's separation barrier on his way to a mass in Manger Square next to the Church of the Nativity, traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. (Source: Associated Press) Sister Nathalie Becquart, named by Francis to a high Vatican job, said his legacy was a church where men and women exist in a relationship of reciprocity and respect. 'It was about shifting a pattern of domination — from human being to the creation, from men to women — to a pattern of cooperation,' said Becquart, the first woman to hold a voting position in a Vatican synod. ADVERTISEMENT A refuge for 'everyone' While Francis stopped short of allowing women to be ordained, the voting reform was part of a revolutionary change in his emphasis of what the Catholic Church should be: a refuge for everyone — 'todos, todos, todos' ('everyone, everyone, everyone') — not just the privileged few. Migrants, the poor, prisoners and outcasts were at his table far more than presidents or CEOs. 'For Pope Francis, it was always to extend the arms of the church to embrace all people, not to exclude anyone,' said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, whom Francis made camerlengo, the official taking charge after a pontiff's death. Francis demanded bishops apply mercy and charity to their flocks, pressed leaders to protect God's creation from climate disaster, and challenged countries to welcome those fleeing war, poverty and oppression. Pope Francis, center, kneels to wash the feet of a man at the Don Gnocchi Foundation Center in Rome, Thursday, April 17, 2014. (Source: Associated Press) After visiting Mexico in 2016, Francis said of then-US presidential candidate Donald Trump that anyone building a wall to keep migrants out 'is not Christian". While progressives were thrilled by Francis' focus on the core of Jesus' message of mercy and welcome for marginalised souls, it troubled conservatives who feared he watered down Catholic teaching and threatened the very Christian identity of Europe and the US. A few cardinals openly challenged him. ADVERTISEMENT Francis usually responded to conflict with his typical answer: silence. He made it easier for Catholics to get a marriage annulment and allowed priests to absolve women who had abortions. He divided the church by opening debate on issues such as homosexuality and divorce, giving pastors wiggle room to discern how to accompany their flocks rather than handing them strict rules. 'I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful,' he told a Jesuit journal in 2013. 'I see the church as a field hospital after battle.' A nod to St Francis of Assisi Pope Francis speaks from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Wednesday, March 13, 2013. (Source: Associated Press) Francis lived in the Vatican hotel instead of the Apostolic Palace, wore his old orthotic shoes and not the red loafers of the papacy, and set an example to the clerical classes by using compact cars. It wasn't a gimmick. If his election as the first Latin American and first Jesuit pope wasn't enough, Francis also was the first to name himself after St Francis of Assisi, the 13th century friar known for personal simplicity, a message of peace, and care for society's outcasts and nature. ADVERTISEMENT Francis sought out those who suffer: the unemployed and sick, the disabled and homeless, the elderly and imprisoned. Those encounters provided poignant images of his papacy, such as in 2013, when he embraced a man with neurofibromatosis, the condition associated with the 'Elephant Man', Joseph Carey Merrick. 'We have always been marginalised, but Pope Francis always helped us,' said Coqui Vargas, a transgender woman whose Roman community forged a unique relationship with Francis during the pandemic. And he himself suffered: Part of his colon was removed in 2021 and he needed more surgery in 2023 to repair a painful hernia and remove intestinal scar tissue. By 2022, he regularly used a wheelchair and cane because of bad knees and bouts of bronchitis. His priorities also informed his travel: His first trip outside Rome as pope was to the Italian island of Lampedusa, then the epicentre of Europe's migration crisis. He consistently visited poor countries where Christians were often persecuted minorities, rather than centres of global Catholicism. Pope Francis blesses sick and disabled people at the end of a pro-life Mass in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, June 16, 2013. (Source: Associated Press) Francis' friend and fellow Argentine, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, said concern for the poor and disenfranchised formed the core of his pontificate, based on the Beatitudes -- the biblical blessings that Jesus delivered in the Sermon on the Mount for the meek, the merciful, the poor in spirit and others. 'Why are the Beatitudes the program of this pontificate? Because they were the basis of Jesus Christ's own program,' Sánchez said. ADVERTISEMENT Missteps on priestly sexual abuse But over a year passed before Francis met with some of the church's most wounded souls -- survivors of priestly sexual abuse -- and victims' groups questioned whether he understood the scope of the problem. Francis created a sex abuse commission to advise the church, but it later lost its influence and its recommendation for a tribunal to judge bishops who covered for predator priests went nowhere. He made up for it with new legal provisions to hold the hierarchy accountable after he endured the greatest crisis of his papacy in 2018, when he discredited Chilean victims of abuse and stood by a controversial bishop linked to their abuser, Chile's most notorious pedophile. After Francis realised his error, he invited the victims to the Vatican for a personal mea culpa and had the leadership of the Chilean church resign en masse. Another crisis erupted surrounding ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired archbishop of Washington and counsellor to three popes. Francis actually had sidelined McCarrick after the church received an accusation he had molested a teenage altar boy in the 1970s. But Francis nevertheless was accused by the Vatican's onetime US ambassador of having rehabilitated McCarrick early in his papacy. Francis eventually defrocked McCarrick after the Vatican determined he sexually abused adults as well as minors. ADVERTISEMENT The two popes Pope Francis holds a baby during an audience with members of Entrepreneurs for Economy of Communion, at the Paul VI Hall, at the Vatican, February 4, 2017. (Source: Associated Press) Francis' 2013 election was paved by Benedict XVI's decision to resign and retire -- the first in 600 years. It created the unprecedented reality of two popes living in the Vatican until Benedict's death on December 31, 2022. Francis didn't shy from that potentially uncomfortable shadow but embraced Benedict as an elder statesman and adviser whom he coaxed out of his cloistered retirement to participate in the public life of the church. 'It's like having your grandfather in the house, a wise grandfather,' Francis said. Francis praised Benedict's decision to retire, saying he 'opened the door' for others. That fueled speculation that he, too, might retire, but after Benedict's death, he made clear the papacy is generally a job for life. Francis' looser liturgical style and pastoral priorities made clear he and the German-born theologian came from very different religious traditions, and Francis overturned several of Benedict's decisions. ADVERTISEMENT He made sure that Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, a hero to the Latin American liberation theology movement, was canonised after his case languished under Benedict over concerns about the credo's Marxist bent. In a controversial move, Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that Benedict had relaxed, arguing the spread of the Tridentine Rite was divisive. That riled Francis' traditionalist critics and opened what became a sustained conflict between right-wing Catholics, particularly in the US, and the Argentine pope. Conservatives 'don't like this pope' Pope Francis, center, eats with inmates in Naples' 'Poggioreale' prison, Italy, Saturday, March 21, 2015. (Source: Associated Press) By then, conservatives had turned away from Francis after he opened debate on allowing remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments if they didn't get an annulment -- a church ruling that their first marriage was invalid. 'We don't like this pope,' headlined Italy's conservative daily Il Foglio a few months into his papacy, reflecting the unease of the small but vocal traditionalist movement that was coddled under Benedict. Those same critics amplified their complaints after Francis' approved church blessings for same-sex couples, and an accord with China over nominating bishops. The details were never released, but conservative critics bashed it as a sellout to communist China, while the Vatican defended it as the best deal it could get. ADVERTISEMENT US Cardinal Raymond Burke, a figurehead in the anti-Francis opposition, said the church had become 'like a ship without a rudder'. Burke waged his campaign for years, starting when Francis fired him as the Vatican's supreme court justice and culminating with his opposition to Francis' 2023 synod on the church's future. He twice joined conservative cardinals in asking Francis to explain himself on doctrine issues where the pope had showed a more progressive bent, including on same-sex blessings and his outreach to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. Francis eventually sanctioned Burke financially, accusing him of sowing 'disunity'. It was one of several moves to shift power away from doctrinaire leaders to more pastoral ones. Reprimanding bureaucrats with 'spiritual Alzheimer's' Pope Francis kneels before a priest to confess, during a penitential liturgy in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Friday, March 17, 2017. (Source: Associated Press) Francis insisted his bishops and cardinals imbue themselves with the 'odor of their flock' and minister to the faithful. When they didn't, he expressed his displeasure. ADVERTISEMENT His 2014 Christmas address to the Vatican Curia was one of the greatest public reprimands of bureaucrats: Standing in the marbled Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace, Francis listed 15 ailments he said can afflict his closest collaborators, including 'spiritual Alzheimer's'. lusting for power and the 'terrorism of gossip'. Francis oversaw reforms of the scandal-marred Vatican bank, and took bold steps to wrestle bureaucrats into financial line, limiting their compensation and ability to receive gifts or award public contracts. He authorised Vatican police to raid his own secretariat of state and the Vatican's financial watchdog agency after suspicions were raised about the secretariat's €350 million investment in a London real estate venture. After a 2 1/2-year trial, the tribunal convicted a once-powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu, of embezzlement and returned mixed verdicts to nine others, acquitting one. The trial, though, became a reputational boomerang, showing deficiencies in the Vatican's legal system, turf battles among monsignors and the ways the pope had intervened in the case. While earning praise for trying to turn Vatican finances around, Francis angered US conservatives for his excoriation of global markets favouring the rich over the poor. Economic justice was an important theme for Francis, saying in his first meeting with journalists that he wanted a 'poor church that is for the poor'. His first major teaching document, 'The Joy of the Gospel', denounced trickle-down economics as unproven and naive, based on a mentality 'where the powerful feed upon the powerless' with no regard for ethics, the environment or even God. ADVERTISEMENT 'Money must serve, not rule!' he said. He elaborated on that in his major eco-encyclical 'Praised Be', denouncing the 'structurally perverse' global economic system that he said exploited the poor and risked turning Earth into 'an immense pile of filth' A childhood of prayer, football and opera Pope Francis holds a San Lorenzo's jersey, the Buenos Aires soccer team, handed to him by a faithful at the end of the Easter mass in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, March 31, 2013. (Source: Associated Press) Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, the eldest of five children of Italian immigrants. He credited his grandmother, Rosa, with teaching him how to pray. Even as pope, he carried in his worn prayer book a Catholic creed she composed. Weekends in the Bergoglio home were spent listening to opera on the radio, going to Mass and attending matches of the family's beloved San Lorenzo football club. His love of football continued into adulthood, and he amassed a huge collection of jerseys as pope from visitors. ADVERTISEMENT He said he received his religious calling at 17 while going to confession at his parish church, San Jose de Flores. 'Something strange happened to me in that confession,' he recounted in a 2010 authorised biography. 'I don't know what it was, but it changed my life. ... I realised that they were waiting for me.' He entered the diocesan seminary and in 1958 switched to the Jesuit order, attracted to its missionary tradition and militancy, being on 'the front lines of the church, grounded in obedience and discipline'. Around this time, he suffered severe pneumonia and the upper part of his right lung was removed. His frail health prevented his becoming a missionary as he had hoped, and his less-than-robust lung capacity was perhaps responsible for his whisper of a voice and reluctance to sing at Mass. On December 13, 1969, he was ordained a priest, and began teaching. In 1973, he became head of the Jesuits in Argentina, an appointment he later acknowledged was 'crazy' at age 36. 'My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,' he said. A clergyman amid dictatorship Pope Francis addresses the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Friday, Sept. 25, 2015 at United Nations headquarters. (Source: Associated Press) His six-year tenure as provincial coincided with the start of Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship, when the military launched a murderous campaign against left-wing guerrillas and other regime opponents. ADVERTISEMENT Like many, Bergoglio didn't outwardly confront the junta, and he was accused of effectively allowing two slum priests to be kidnapped and tortured by not publicly endorsing their work. Bergoglio refused to counter that version for decades. Only in a 2010 authorised biography did he finally recount his extraordinary, behind-the-scenes effort to save them, persuading the family priest of feared dictator Jorge Videla to call in sick so that he could say Mass instead. Once inside the junta leader's home, Bergoglio appealed for mercy. Both priests were eventually released, two of the few surviving prisoners. In 1986, Bergoglio went to Germany to research a never-finished thesis. Upon returning to Argentina, he essentially went into internal exile within the Jesuits, stationed in Cordoba during a period he called a time of 'great interior crisis'. Out of favour with the more progressive leadership of Argentina's Jesuits, Bergoglio was eventually rescued from obscurity by St John Paul II, who in 1992 named him an auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. Six years later, he became archbishop, and then cardinal in 2001. A humble man who denied himself the luxuries that previous archbishops enjoyed, Bergoglio rode the bus, cooked his own meals and regularly visited slums. He came close to becoming pope in 2005 when Benedict was elected, gaining the second-most votes in several rounds of balloting before bowing out. After becoming pope, accounts began emerging more widely of the many priests, seminarians and dissidents he saved in the 'dirty war', letting them stay incognito at the seminary or helping them escape the country. 'He made me wonder if he really understood the trouble he was getting into. If they grabbed us together, they would have marched us both off,' onetime radical Gonzalo Mosca told AP in 2014, recounting how Bergoglio let him stay at the seminary and bought his plane ticket to Brazil. It was a gesture typical of the pope.
