Having recently returned from a visit to Cambodia, Father Anthony Chantry, the National Director of Missio in England and Wales, has revealed the many challenges the Catholic Church faces in the country.
Speaking on the latest Catholic News podcast, Father Chantry said the Church literally had to “start from scratch” and focus its efforts on healing after dictator Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime:
“I would say the Church is actually only 35 years old. I say that because in 1990, the new Cambodian government allowed one public Mass in Phnom Penh, at Easter. The Church was utterly destroyed, completely – not just the schools, not just the churches, convents, presbyteries, but the people themselves. They were either killed or exiled. So the Church really had to start from scratch.”
He added:
“How do you start from scratch? How do you start from nothing in a radically different culture where people have forgotten about the Church, know nothing of Christ, and are suffering deep-seated trauma?
“I think that’s part of the task of the Church – to heal. It’s probably the main focus of the Church at all levels – to heal the mind, the soul, the body.”
He said that radical acts of service from people such as the Spanish missionary Father Enrique “Kike” Figaredo were vital in showing the people what the faith was about:
“One of the first problems that he saw were a lot of children with missing limbs because of the landmines that were sown by the Khmer Rouge in their retreat and by just about everyone else who has been fighting in Cambodia. So he said, ‘how can we help these children to live a good life?’, because they had no prosthetics or nothing to help them.
“He set up a whole system to help children who were missing limbs. And he got so involved with that, that people saw and wondered, ‘why is he doing that? Why is he helping our children in this way?’
“And so they started to ask questions. ‘What motivates you? It’s obviously not money, it’s not power.’ And then we can start talking about Jesus and about our commitment to the Kingdom of God. We can talk about the love of God as shown in Jesus. We can talk about the suffering of Jesus – that’s part of the package. We can talk about the crucifix as a symbol not just of suffering, but of redemption, of hope, of liberation.
“In fact, if you go to Cambodia, you will see many crucifixes with Jesus, the Corpus, the Body of Christ, missing a leg.”
Father Chantry also explained how Christians in nearby Myanmar are facing a “very tough time” under the military junta currently in power, with a cathedral reportedly bombed by the military in February.
He said:
“The military dictatorship, the junta, is in control, but not everywhere. It has oppression as its way of operating. Anyone who is against them, they will eliminate one way or another. Do you know there are probably over three million people displaced, driven out of their homes, their villages raised to the ground?”
Talking about how difficult it is for the Church in this context, he said:
“The Church is strong in some places and is overall a minority. It continues to function, but there have been attacks on churches and Christian communities, and also on cathedrals – at least one cathedral anyway – as well as bishops’ residences.
“The Christians are finding it very difficult, as are the rest of the population, in fact. So please continue to pray for them.”
Also during the podcast interview, Father Chantry talked about how missionaries stay hopeful in such a variety of challenging circumstances, Missio’s work during a Year of Jubilee, and how Lent can be a fertile time for missionary activity.
You can listen to the full podcast here.
