Whatever Happened to Berrigan House?

By Will Irvine

For nearly a decade, a utopian socialist community existed right on the doorstep of Victoria University of Wellington. People from around the world with a keen interest in social justice lived together in a shared community, spending their nights discussing ideas and their days helping the community. With an open-door policy to strangers from across society, and no expected cost but a small koha to cover the costs of power and utilities, this was about as close to an oasis of democratic socialism as one could get within the harsh desert of a capitalist society.

The catch? It was a ministry of the Catholic Church.

For most young, liberally-minded students, the eternal Church rightfully conjures up images of fear. We imagine the Spanish genocide of the Mayan and Aztec people, or the thousands of dead children found under Canadian reservation schools. We think of the forced re-education of Māori. Yet for centuries, a few radicals have sought to use the Church’s ancient teachings and immense resources to bring hope and rebellion against oppressive social structures — much in the way that Christ and his disciples did when they lived on earth.

The Catholic Worker Movement is one such radical tradition. Founded in the USA by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933, the Catholic Workers have set about building a network of houses and centres across the globe, providing food and comfort for the poor. In the words of Maurin, their aim was “to create a new society within the shell of the old”. They sought to live their life based on the Beatitudes, a Christian doctrine derived from Jesus’s blessings on the poor, meek, righteous, and the peacemakers. Their tactics mirror similar movements in the global south, particularly Latin America, where Catholic doctrine is used as a tool of resistance by indigenous and workers’ movements. This practice, known as liberation theology, was the intellectual breeding ground of Pope Francis.

Jack Leason had just returned from a tour of Catholic Worker houses across the USA when he arrived back in Te-Whanganui-A-Tara. Raised on a Catholic Worker farm, Leason grew up in the radical movement. He had the bright idea of starting a Catholic Worker house in the city, inspired by a house he visited outside of Notre Dame University. A lack of housing led to him and his brother Finn squatting in an abandoned building for a period of months, until a chance encounter led to the Catholic Archdiocese of Wellington formally offering them a place to stay. Some free real estate had shown up on Kelburn Parade, and the archdiocese was willing to let Jack and his comrades use it rent-free, in essence becoming the Church’s official ministry on campus.

The little house on Kelburn Parade soon became Berrigan House, named after radical Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, who made headlines with his direct action against the Vietnam War in the 1970s. “We didn’t really know what our kaupapa would be”, Jack tells me, but “it was just really special to have a living situation like that.” Students who went to VUW before 2025 may remember the Palestinian, and West Papuan flags flying high through their windows — eternal symbols of global resistance and solidarity.

Danielle Webb, who moved there soon after Jack established the house, had already been in the Catholic Worker movement for some time — her cousins had established a Catholic Worker farm in Hokianga. The initial appeal of Berrigan was simple: in Danielle’s words, they wanted to “live intentionally along social justice values”. It wasn’t without challenges, though. Danielle described the house as pretty full-on, with the open-door policy meaning that residents would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to a complete stranger on their doorstep. The chaos, Danielle explained, is “sort of part of the Catholic Worker kaupapa… it’s always slightly disorganised”.

The people who choose to live in a utopian community are often those who don’t find it easy in mainstream society. This was certainly true at Berrigan House. “Imagine people with different levels of dysfunction, all living together… you’re seeing people at all stages of their life.” That kind of vulnerability created a sense of mutual respect and trust, said Danielle. “It’s very honest. You see everything about their lives.” She recalls particularly poignant moments, where members of the house supported one another through a fellow housemate’s passing. Beyond the tough moments, though, Berrigan House was a place of intense intellectual discussions. In the early days, when the residents were all students, they would return from their classes every day with new ideas to discuss and debate.

A weekly highlight of life at Berrigan was the Wednesday Mass, which Jack described as “a giant potluck dinner”. “There’d be homeless folk, there’d be students… all sorts of people around the table sharing in the Eucharist. Those kinds of moments were awesome. They were a sense of community within a busy city week.” 

However, ideological communities will always run into practical concerns. Danielle noted that their open-door policy sometimes meant turning people away who would be safer elsewhere. For example, the house, filled with young students and people from all backgrounds, wasn’t a safe space for young mothers to raise children. According to Danielle, though, there was never a strict policy for who was or wasn’t suitable. “Those sorts of things were constantly being resolved, they were always in motion”.

Practical concerns, though not their own, were eventually what did Berrigan House in. In a story that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s lived in Wellington long enough, costs became too much. The Archdiocese eventually requested the building back, citing the need for revenue from the property. Jack now lives with his wife out in Otaki, where he helps local primary school students with regenerative gardening and runs a co-operative farm. He describes it as a “pay-what-you-can” service, where families can subscribe to a weekly bag of vegetables within their means. 

Is Victoria University of Wellington worse off without Berrigan House? Danielle wasn’t sure. To her, the house was more of a standing point for the wider community than a specifically University-oriented project. Jack, likewise, said that Berrigan House was just one part of a “history of radical houses… I’m sure another one will spring up.” But for the thousands of students, myself included, who walked past the chaplaincy complex every day and saw the flags of resistance and solidarity flying high, Berrigan House was a symbol. Maybe we didn’t need to end the world to start anew. Maybe, like Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, we could build a new society within the shell of the old.