Category: Church

The Catholic Church in Cambodia.

CACD Retreat #2

As part of the CACD retreat (Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development), we visited a social enterprise center where Bishop Olivier has created basically cottage industries to give employment mainly to people with disabilities and poor women who have no source of income and no possibility of jobs like in the city.

One source of employment is weaving khramas (scarfs) and other cloth on these massive wooden looms.
Weaving is a simple process basically but it looks rather complicated to the untrained observer. Here a woman guides a shuttle with white thread across the loom while the shuttle with green thread rests on the finished product.
Here a woman weaves a solid-color piece of material. It is a slow process, basically weaving one thread at a time.
Another view of the process.
This woman is able to bring her toddler child to work with her.

CACD Retreat

Today was spent–all day–at Takeo, south of Phnom Penh. I got up at 4:40 AM to catch a bus taking members of the Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development (CACD) to the St. Paul Institute in Takeo where we had an annual retreat that Bishop Olivier combined with a tour of the institute and two high schools and a social enterprise center there. It was quite a day. [More on the retreat to come.]

Epiphany 2023

There is a tradition in Phnom Penh of the bishop inviting pastoral workers and parish representatives to a gathering at the pastoral center on Epiphany Sunday. In the past it was a time for the pastoral workers to catch up with each other and for the bishop to disseminate news but now it has become an occasion more for socializing and recognizing different offices in the diocese.

All the Maryknollers arrived in the Maryknoll Mental Health van.
Every Cambodia event features at least one traditional dance.
One of the diocesan agency groups receiving the bishop’s thanks and appreciation.
A choir of teenage youth sang twice during the evening.
The younger set participated, too. Here children dance and sing to Jingle Bells.
At the end of the program, Santa Claus arrived and distributed gifts of rice and cookies and booklets to all who had come.

Back on the block…

Fr. Hung Nguyen was an associate priest with me starting in 2001 and then he returned to his diocese of Seattle. Now he is looking at possible Asian mission again and today he and I met with Bishop Olivier to discuss the possibility of Hung’s working with the English community here. I hope so!

Mass on Christmas Day

For mass on Christmas morning, we moved from the small chapel (where we can seat only 100 persons) to the large upstairs church used by the Khmer community. We had to bring in chairs because they sit on mats on the floor and we had to take off our shoes as they do, but it was a very comfortable worship space that enabled us to welcome more people.

The Khmer community had copiously decorated the sanctuary for their own liturgy before ours.
In Khmer masses where the people sit on the floor, the priest presides from a sitting position instead of the usual standing position.
The sanctuary area of this church is very “busy” visually.
The Christmas crib or creche was a bit different. Made from 25-lb bags of rice, it looked something like a military bunker.

No Entry

This morning I went to the Don Bosco Technical School for a day of reflection for the Salesian brothers and priests who live there. I have always used this gate to get in but today it was locked and no one was around. I waited about five minutes and then noticed a man on the inside of the wall to the left of the gate. He was rather far from this gate so i went back to the street behind me and walked to the left and found they have a second gate that they use only on Saturdays and Sundays. Finally I got in and met with the confreres there.

Christmas is near…

Today Bishop Olivier had the quarterly meeting with all the priests from the Phnom Penh diocese and he added a Christmas air to it. At the lunch at the end of the morning, he donned a Christmas cap and handed out some simple gifts to all of us. There are now 45 priests in the diocese of Phnom Penh. When I came to Cambodia 22 years ago, there were 32 priests in the whole country.