To symbolise the current struggle and show support for survivors, leaders of the advocacy network SNAP Aotearoa New Zealand are urging New Zealand Catholics and people of goodwill, to wear white clothes every Sunday of February and March 2026.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), recognises its white-clothes initiative needs support of Catholics and people of goodwill on the ground. “We hope people will support the victims and survivors and hold church leaders to account as Jesus did,” says Donald McLeish, SNAP Aotearoa co-leader.

Survivors are claiming that the finding of NZ’s Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, that “Catholic Church leaders have not been accountable or transparent to their congregations and the broader community about the nature and extent of abuse” (Faith Summary para.199), has worsened since the Inquiry ended in June 2024.

SNAP reports that survivors are currently facing insurmountable obstacles in obtaining justice and healing as church leaders are now using lawyers in their pastoral redress process.

But in 2021, the NZ Catholic Church’s National Office for Professional Standards (NOPS), which handles clergy and religious sexual abuse complaints, told the Abuse In Care Inquiry that it had “only instructed lawyers in relation to advice on an employment matter, advice on privacy, and advice on developing and reviewing APTH” (WITN0256001: 29 January 2021). “But that’s all changed now,” says McLeish. “Survivors are now being contacted by lawyers instructed by NOPS threatening to dismiss their complaints under very unfair and distressing circumstances.”

SNAP reports that the NZ Catholic bishops recently oversaw NOPS and the committee that oversees NOPS, the National Safeguarding & Professional Standards Committee, instruct a Christchurch-based lawyer to shut down two complaints of historical clerical sex abuse and coverup after the survivor raised questions about the investigative work not being completed.

“Instructing lawyers to threaten survivors has no place in a pastoral healing process," says Richard van der Hulst, SNAP Aotearoa leader in Waikato/Bay of Plenty, “especially as an act of retaliation against a survivor for wanting the redress protocol to be properly followed.”

SNAP is now calling on Catholics and people of goodwill in New Zealand to wear white on Sundays in February and March 2026 as a sign of solidarity with victims and survivors.

Gerard Boyce, parish priest at St Peter Chanel Catholic Church, Whakatāne, supports SNAP’s new move. “I welcome SNAP’s new initiative for this new year. Indeed, I welcome any initiative that will keep before us, in our prayer and practice, the reality of abuse in the church, and our obligations to survivors.”

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