KEY POINTS:
Catholics are planning to converge on the remote Torata Point in Northland on Sunday to commemorate 170 years since the first Mass was celebrated in New Zealand.
On January 13, 1838, the French cleric Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pompallier said the first Mass in the living room of Thomas and Mary Poynton, devout pioneers who had settled in the Hokianga. Catholic pilgrims now return annually.
This weekend, hundreds of worshippers are expected to flock to a memorial on farmland above a river where the Poyntons' house once stood.
