[1] In 1969 Meuli was appointed editor of the newspaper, Zealandia, by Archbishop Liston of Auckland in a controversial episode accompanying the profound changes to the Catholic Church in New Zealand engendered by the second Vatican Council.
He also held chaplaincies in several parishes in France (including Neuilly-sur-Seine, Charleville-Mézières, Armentières) and at the Walburgeschule in Menden, Germany, while collecting material for his doctorate.
He obtained his doctorate from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1959[3] and then returned to New Zealand where he served in the parishes of Three Kings, Avondale, and Glen Eden.
[2] Zealandia was closely controlled by its founder and owner, Archbishop Liston, who did not attend the Vatican Council and expected his authoritarian management style to continue into the late 1960s.
These views were reflected in his first editorial page where he dismissed talk of the Rights of the Press as "so much cant and claptrap", and urged readers to "think of Zealandia" as "simply an unusual kind of parish and yourself as its parishioners".
[11] Catholic university students, led by Brian Lythe, organised a "Pray-in" at St Patrick's Cathedral to protest at Murray's dismissal.
[10][12] One of the departing staff (Pat McCarthy) spent his two weeks' notice instructing Meuli (who had no experience in journalism) in the mechanics of production.
Paradoxically, because of the absence of informed Catholic staff, the newspaper began, amidst the prevailing conservative editorial outlook, to address lively social issues outside the church.
He stepped down in early 1970 and was replaced by his auxiliary bishop, Reginald John Delargey who on 27 May 1971 announced the appointment of a new editor for the newspaper, Pat Booth.
[16] In 1987 he studied the work of Patrick Henry Omlor and his questioning of the validity of the Novus Ordo Mass using the all-English Canon, particularly the replacement of the Latin "Pro multis" ("for many") with the English "for all" in the rite of consecration.
In 1989 Denis Browne, the tenth Bishop of Auckland, made a small church available to Meuli[3] and this became the centre of the Mount St. Mary "non-geographic" parish, Titirangi, where the "traditional Latin liturgy" is followed.
The well-attended requiem Mass was celebrated at the Church of the Holy Family, Te Atatū, on 27 March 2019 in Latin in the extraordinary form by Father Michael-Mary Sim FSSR (Rector-Major of the Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer[21]) with Fr Antony Sumich as deacon and Fr Jeremy Palman as subdeacon.
Antony Sumich preached the panegyric in which Meuli was described as a counter to the dissent which had followed the publication, in 1968, of Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae.
[16] Amongst other personal details, mention was made of Meuli's love of classic cars - in Glen Eden he had possessed two Monaros and a Jaguar.