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The Catholic Church in Cambodia.
Today the Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development (CACD) had an online meeting to review the church’s outreach in the Covid-19 pandemic. Caritas Cambodia has been organizing the outreach and presented really sad numbers concerning the great needs of the poor people. One group that has been especially hard hit are the inmates in Cambodia’s not-so-good prisons. This photos is of a group of prisoners receiving food aid. [Note the second woman in the middle row has her child with her.]
Most bishops would project a rather calm, staid, conservative image. Bishop Olivier would not fit that description too closely. Click here for photos of him in different endeavors.
Many of us go by familiar sites in Phnom Penh without ever knowing their history and significance.
Look at Photo 4 above. It’s a picture of the old Catholic cathedral in Phnom Penh that was torn down by the Khmer Rouge. You have been by its site a million times but probably weren’t aware of its history. In the #4 photograph, the photographer is standing on Daun Penh Avenue, facing west. His back is to Wat Phnom, on his left is the present U.S. Embassy, and on his right is the Sunway Hotel. He is taking a picture of the cathedral located on Monivong Blvd.
Photo #1 is a close-up picture of the cathedral as it looked in 1962. Photo #2 is a picture of the present Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications which was built on the site of the cathedral. In 2000, there was a large government radio tower where the cathedral had been located, but then the tower was moved and the Ministry of Posts was built in its place.
Photo #3 is what is today called the Municipality or City Hall. In 1962 it was the headquarters of the M.E.P. mission group. That is the French mission society to which Bishop Olivier belongs. M.E.P. had responsibility for the Catholic Church in all of French Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia), and they built their headquarters right next to the cathedral. In Photo #3, the orangish building to the left of City Hall is the Ministry of Posts which replaced the cathedral.
After all the wars, the government took over the M.E.P. headquarters and kept it for themselves. Today you can ride by the City Hall building on Monivong to get a glimpse of Phnom Penh’s past and of church history in Cambodia. The former M.E.P. headquarters building (now City Hall) is on the west side of Monivong Blvd, across from the Raffles Hotel. It is easy to spot the former M.E.P. building because the fence along Monivong has crosses built into it.
Disclaimer: This is not a manifesto, a separate document put forward by John Wesley, but rather a compilation of principles that are found in his writings.
“The vaccine — whether it’s Moderna, Pfizer or… Johnson & Johnson — is our only path back to normal. Every expert says so. Unless and until we reach herd immunity, the virus will constrain our ability to get back to some semblance of what life was like before March 2020. The only other way we get there is if lots and lots more people get Covid-19 — like somewhere between 70% and 85% of the population. Which, if past is prologue, would mean a lot more deaths before we got to that point. Given those two choices, getting the vaccine seems like the better one!”
[From The Point by Chris Cillizza]
When the government suddenly imposed a lockdown without much time for people to prepare, many were left without adequate food and other necessities. Bishop Olivier establish an emergency relief committee and they have started distributing needed supplies to poor families like these two in the photos.
Pope Francis has been vaccinated against the coronavirus, calling it a lifesaving, ethical obligation and saying the refusal to be vaccinated is suicidal. A coalition of Catholic groups, including Maryknoll, support the pope’s emphasis on being vaccinated. And just this morning, the Maryknoll Cambodia community received their first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine. https://catholiccares.org/resources #CatholicCares
