Bishop Tom Neylon, Lead Bishop for Asia for the Bishops’ Conference, has recently returned from a week-long trip to Pakistan with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need.
Visiting from 9-16 March, Bishop Neylon visited a number of projects funded by the charity and met with the faithful, priests and bishops in the major cities of Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Lahore and Faisalabad.
Making reference to the fact that Church attendance in Pakistan is very strong, Bishop Neylon received a warm welcome and explained how, at one Friday afternoon Mass in Rawalpindi, there were over 1,000 worshipers in the cathedral with many more outside unable to get in.
“The Church is very strong. It’s very much a minority – between one and two percent of the population would be Christian/Catholic and there are other minority faiths and religions in the country as well. Even though there are a small number of Catholics, in terms of the attendance at church – the place was full…
“The evidence we saw, without any kind of prodding or probing, was the number of people who would turn up for prayer or for Mass – there’s something like a 70% practice rate among the local Catholic population. So, given the environment in which they live, where there can be discrimination of minorities, and well-documented cases where there’s been violence or even killings associated with places of worship, people make a deliberate choice to say, ‘yes, I want to live my faith. I want to practise my faith. I want to share my faith with my children.’”
Speaking on our Catholic News podcast strand, Bishop Neylon discusses how education is a key priority in the dioceses he visited.
“The education for young people, for young adults as well, [is very important] to try and lift them out of poverty, to seek qualifications to get them into the civil service, so they’re able then to join the wider community in serving Pakistan’s society through the civil service network.”
He also praised the Catholic Church for delivering education and healthcare services that provide for wider society and not just their own community.
“We heard stories that there are Catholic schools and Catholic hospitals, but they serve the wider community as well. They’re not just in an enclave or a ghetto, but they’re there really to serve the wider society. I think in terms of education, there’s something like 300 Catholic schools across the whole of Pakistan, and very often some of the schools are well subscribed by people not of Christian or Catholic faith, but the majority of people in the population.”
Bishop Tom Neylon made the visit to Pakistan in his capacity as Lead Bishop for Asia for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales at the invitation of Aid to the Church in Need who organised the visit. ACN UK’s website can be found at acnuk.org
All images © Aid to the Church in Need.
Bishop Tom Neylon, you visited Pakistan in March – that must have been quite something.
I spent a week in Pakistan with Aid to the Church in Need. We visited some of the projects that they have helped to fund with the people, with seminarians and with the priests in the parishes, and also the bishops in three places – Islamabad, Lahore and also in Faisalabad.
Well, we’ll come on to some of the challenges faced by Catholics in Pakistan and also your experiences and your encounters. But tell us a little bit about what you’ve learned about the make-up of the Catholic Church in Pakistan.
The Church is very strong. It’s very much a minority – between one and two percent of the population would be Christian/Catholic and there are other minority faiths and religions in the country as well. Even though there are a small number of Catholics, in terms of the attendance at church – the place was full. My experience was on a Friday afternoon there were Stations of the Cross in the cathedral in Rawalpindi followed by Mass at 4:30pm. I was informed afterwards that there were also people outside the church because they couldn’t get in. There were probably about 1,000 people inside the church on that Friday afternoon with the bishop, the parish priest and others who would be there for Mass.
And how did those Catholics react to having a bishop from England and Wales over?
They gave me a warm welcome. That was one of the things that was mentioned before we went on the trip – to be prepared for the welcome. You get the garlands from the people. I also received numerous bunches of flowers – the first time that had happened in my life! And gifts as well from the people, little souvenirs of Pakistan. So again, the warmth of welcome, the connection with the people, the conversations that we had very often most were speaking in reasonable English, and it was easy to converse with them.
Now we’d be remiss not to acknowledge that obviously Christians, Catholics, minorities in Pakistan do face challenges. What sort of challenges are faced by the Catholic community out there?
In conversations with young people, sometimes people of a Christian or a minority faith, religion, culture find it difficult to make progress, whereas in other countries throughout the world people are accepted for who they are and are allowed to go through an education system without too much discrimination – so it is a challenge for a lot of these young people. Pakistan is a young country, lots of young people around, and you think in other parts of the world they would relish opportunities to pursue education quite freely.
And tell us a bit about the places that you visited. What sort of projects did you see? Tell us about the people you encountered…
Yes, in a variety of settings. One that comes immediately to mind was in Rawalpindi, where next door to the cathedral, where we had the Mass on the Friday afternoon, there’s a hostel for young girls and women. Some of them may be orphaned, some of them may be from family backgrounds that are quite challenging. Others were victims of some criminal activity in the background. So they have a place of shelter and safety there and receive education at a neighbouring convent school – they get a really good education there. That seems to be one of the strong threads running through many of the dioceses that we visited – the education for young people, for young adults as well, to try and lift them out of poverty, to seek qualifications to get them into the civil service, so they’re able then to join the wider community in serving Pakistan’s society through the civil service network.
Is it a country where Catholics can worship freely?
Generally, yes. The strange thing about all the situations was that the church or the parish hall where we met people is in a compound. So there would be some security going in. There might be a security man on the gate. Sometimes in the bigger towns and cities, there could be police and army on the street, just ensuring that people are able to come and go freely to worship. Obviously, we have heard news of some violence that’s happened across Pakistan and other parts of the world, and sometimes it’s tied up with places of worship that targeted – not just Catholic Christian places, but other places as well. The wider society does what it can to try and protect people. But there is that kind of question mark at the back of the mind when people set out to go to church locally, it’ll be known where they’re going. People wouldn’t have necessarily the freedom that we have to turn up to church or to a Christian or Catholic event whenever we feel like it.
But that said, I was lucky enough to see a good dozen pictures from your visit and I’m pretty sure in one of them I could see the shell of a church being built. So it’s an “alive” church, isn’t it?
It is, yes. That was the community in Chakwal, which is on the outskirts of Islamabad, and there was a small estate of houses being built. Most of them have been built already, so there were people well established and occupying them. In the months after Easter, the church that you saw in the photograph, will be officially opened by the bishop. So there was the shell of the church there – that’s where we actually met the majority of the people, in this empty shell, if you like, which hopefully, if I ever return there, it’ll be a different kind of scene. But very much a warm, welcoming, vibrant community.
When you were mentioning the projects and places you visited, and the fact that we’re talking one or two percent of Christians/Catholics in Pakistan, it never ceases to amaze me how much these small communities, minorities, punch well above their weight in terms of either education, health care provision. They’re working hard for the majority society, aren’t they?
They are working hard. We heard stories that there are Catholic schools and Catholic hospitals, but they serve the wider community as well. They’re not just in an enclave or a ghetto, but they’re there really to serve the wider society. I think in terms of education, there’s something like 300 Catholic schools across the whole of Pakistan, and very often some of the schools are well subscribed by people not of Christian or Catholic faith, but the majority of people in the population.
In terms of the local church, obviously, I know we’ve talked about that, but the hierarchy of the local church, what were they sort of impressing upon you as a bishop from England and Wales? What did they want you to know about their Church?
The evidence we saw, without any kind of prodding or probing, was the number of people who would turn up for prayer or for Mass. I believe there’s something like a 70-75 percent practise rate among the local Catholic population. So, given the environment in which they live, where there can be discrimination of minorities, and well-documented cases where there’s been violence or even killings associated with places of worship, people make a deliberate choice to say, “yes, I want to live my faith. I want to practise my faith. I want to share my faith with my children.”
That’s supported by the catechists on the ground – they seem to be very, very important people. They do a three-year training course. They live among the people. I suppose, like we’re used to priests living among the people in our parishes in England and Wales, they become the bridge between the local Catholic families and community and the priest.
There’s lots of strong links with the priest locally. Obviously, the parishes cover miles and miles and miles of territory, whether it’s in a city, a town or out in the countryside. We visited a couple of colonies which are on the outskirts of the city in what was, at one time, farmland or wasteland. Now there are communities there growing up and thriving.
So a final question that I do like to ask… I’m a Catholic sitting in a pew in England and Wales, and I now know what you’ve told me about the Catholic Church in Pakistan. How should I learn more about it? What would you say to me?
Quite simply, when I was in conversation with people, it could be with a young person, it could be with a mother or a father of a family. They just simply said, “Pray for us.” Some of them were very specific about the needs it was to do with themselves, their general health and wellbeing, or the health and wellbeing of the family. They have aspirations for their children, and a lot of them make many sacrifices.
I would encourage people to pray for them. Also there are organisations like Aid to the Church in Need, CAFOD are also involved in humanitarian work in the south of the country, where there’s been flooding and earthquakes. So there are agencies based in England and Wales or have a connection with the Church in this country. If people want to do something practical, they could just go online or make a phone call and get some information and it might encourage them to support, in a tangible, practical way, the Church in Pakistan.
Well, Bishop Tom Neylon, our Lead Bishop for Asia, thank you so much for just giving us a few minutes and a few of your reflections on that visit. I take it, given the opportunity, you would go back?
I would. To be honest, when there was a possibility of a visit coming up and of course, with the Pandemic, people hadn’t been able to do that for all kinds of reasons. When they mentioned Pakistan, I kind of gulped and took a step back and I realised it is a challenging place to live, or it can be a challenging place to live. But once I set foot on the ground over there, the welcome I received from the people and the kind of connections I’ve made. I’m still in contact with the priests and people through WhatsApp. That kind of friendship was built up quite quickly just from a short visit.
Hopefully I’ll be able to develop my links and interest in Pakistan, the Church in Pakistan, the country as well. It’s a young country, it’s a fertile country. There’s a very energetic young labour force there, so it should be a place that’s booming, really. So I look forward to seeing how things develop in the future.
Well, Bishop Tom, we thank you very much. We’ll continue as well, of course, to pray for Pakistan, to pray for the Catholics, to pray for the minorities, and to pray for the work of Aid to the Church in Need and others that are looking to just hold up the people and support them in their daily lives. But thanks very much, Bishop Tom.
Thank you very much.
