Category: Church

The Catholic Church in Cambodia.

End of Session 1

Today is the last working day of the Bishops Synod in Rome. Here at the end of the first month-long session are Bishop Kike (L) from Battambang in Cambodia and Fr. James Martin, SJ (R) whom I met at Maryknoll, NY, and a third unknown priest.

CACD meeting

Today we had the quarterly meeting of the Catholic Alliance for Charity and Development, the organization of the Cambodian Catholic Church’s social service agencies.

There were two main topics on the agenda today. Here Joseph from Caritas Australia presents the context of the strategic planning for CACD that is now taking place. That was followed by a reporting by Rozet on research on autism in Cambodia that has been done by CCAMH.

Lay Missioner Gathering

I’m not sure what happened but somehow this didn’t get posted yesterday.

Because of rain and conflicting schedules, this month’s gathering was smaller. The lay missioners were from Korea, Italy, Japan, Honduras, and the United States, and Brother John, a seminarian from the Thai Mission Society also came and took this picture.
Ai and Tomoko from the Japan Lay Mission Movement gave a presentation about their work.
Caritas from Korea prepared a lot of really interesting and tasty foods for us!
A picture with Brother John who is from Vietnam.
A farewell photo.

Sunday Liturgy

Today our Sunday liturgy was a little bit special. After the homily, Jay, one of our parishioners, received the sacrament of confirmation.

We celebrated the beginning of a new school year by inviting all our students–and even those not yet in school–to come forward after communion to receive a blessing.

Daughters of Charity

The Daughters of Charity, a congregation founded by St. Vincent de Paul, opened a new building near the airport in Phnom Penh and asked Bishop Olivier to come bless it.

The house is located in an area where thousands of garment factory workers live, and the sisters will take of the workers’ children during the day while the mothers are on the job.

Of course, every ceremony starts with a traditional blessing dance.

After a liturgy, Bishop Olivier went through the building and blessed the rooms with holy water, and then all the guests were invited for lunch.

Jesuit Ordination

Bishop Olivier prays the prayer of ordination over Fr. Damo while all the attending priests support the call for God’s Spirit to come upon Damo by extending their hands

After ordination, Fr. Damo is embraced by Bishop Olivier, marking a joyful end to years of preparation. Jesuits are usually ordained at an older age than diocesan priests, typically getting an advanced degree before they are deemed ready for priesthood.

At the end all the priests, Damo’s family, and Buddhist monks as invited co-workers get together.

Jesuit Ordination

Preparation before the ceremony

Yesterday’s post showed some of the preparations taking place all around the church compound the day before the ordination. These photos today show the immediate preparation as the priests gathered to vest and process to the sanctuary.

About 90 priests from maybe 2o countries came to Battambang for the ordination. Many of them were Jesuits participating in the celebration for a confrere.
Bishop Kike of Battambang and Damo before the ceremony.
All the current deacons in Cambodia (Damo in the center). The others will be ordained priests later this year.
A young man in a wheelchair led the entrance procession.
The procession from the bishop’s house to the ceremony site.

Jesuit Ordination

We arrived in Battambang about 1:00 PM on Friday for the ordination to be held on Saturday morning. Preparations were in full swing.

At the actual site of the ordination, chairs were set up for a reported 2,000 attendees.
Bishop Olivier went over the texts and different parts of the ceremony with the ministers for the next day.
Bishop Kike took photos of the young women who would perform the traditional welcome dance at the beginning of the ceremony.
Musicians with traditional Cambodian instruments accompanied the dancers for the rehearsal.
On another part of the church grounds, sleeping arrangements were prepared for the hundreds of overnight guests coming from far parts of Cambodia.
Then as night fell a simple meal was offered to those who had worked hard and would be staying overnight.

Jesuit Ordination

Yesterday and today, I was in Battambang at the Catholic center there, to participate in the ordination of Chour Damo as a Jesuit priest. The ordination was today. I went there yesterday because it is a 5+ hours drive from Phnom Penh. Yesterday as workers were preparing food, lodging, the church grounds, and the ordination site, I found Chour Damo together with his younger brother, Chour Darong who is the executive director of Krousar Thmey, an International NGO serving children at risk in Cambodia.

Chour Darong (L) and Chour Damo