Category: Maryknoll

Happenings in the Maryknoll world, especially in the Cambodia Mission Team.

Taiwan Trip-Tuesday

The first full day of meetings started off with a report by the Maryknoll Superior General Lance Nadeau.
Fr. Joyalito is the Asia Region Superior and appeared throughout the day giving reports and guidance for the meetings.
In the afternoon all the participants at this meeting gave a brief overview of their lives and ministry at this time. This is Fr. Bob McCahill from Bangladesh.
The members gathered in the chapel for evening prayer before supper.
After supper there was a musical presentation by a string ensemble that is supported by Fr. Kurt Anderson. Here four of the six members are tuning up.

Taiwan Trip-Monday

The four of us (Kevin Conroy, Charles Tsai, Brian Barrons, Charlie Dittmeier) stayed overnight at the Maryknoll house in Taipei and gathered for breakfast. The group had hoped to see the Super Bowl before leaving for Taichung, but it was not on any of the available stations.
There was a 2 hour, 15 minutes drive south to Taichung, and then at 4:00 PM, there was an opening liturgy with the bishop of Taichung.
There are six young men from the Philippines, candidates for joining Maryknoll, staying at the Taipei house. They provided musical accompaniment for the mass.
Then there was a social gathering to allow us all to meet each other, either for the first time or to renew old acquaintances.
Then it was time to eat, and when the meal was finished, most headed for their rooms after a long day of traveling from the countries of east Asia.

Taiwan Trip-Sunday

The Maryknoll priests group is having an Asia Region Assembly 13-17 February 2023, and Fr. Kevin Conroy and I were invited even though we are no longer members of the Maryknoll Society. I flew Sunday, 12 February, from Phnom Penh to Taipei.

This is a sign on the desk at passport control when leaving Cambodia. No other country in the world has such a sign because it would be unthinkable to charge for checking a passport but officials in Cambodia thought it necessary to post this sign because in Cambodia officials do charge illegal payments (bribes, “tea money”) for almost every service citizens need.
I went to the Maryknoll house in Taipei and there was met by Henry Wong and Judy Wu, friends and colleagues from Hong Kong who are now resident in Taiwan.
Judy and Henry and their son Dominique then took me to dinner where we had time to catch up.
Then they took me to the Taiwan Lantern Festival, a two-week extravaganza of lights covering blocks and blocks of downtown Taichung.

The lights and displays were spectacular!

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!

A fried returns…

More than fifteen years ago, Fr. Hung Nguyen and I were Maryknoll associate priests together here in Cambodia. After his term, Hung returned to his diocese in Seattle, Washington where he has been pastor of different parishes. Now on a visit to Cambodia, he joined us today for our liturgy and dinner. Here he is speaking with Hang Tran, a Maryknoll lay missioner.

November Trip to Bangkok

My trip to Bangkok was rather simple, just a consultation with the surgeon who removed part of my kidney in May to make sure all things are going well. There weren’t a lot of exciting photos!





The focal point of the trip was BNH Hospital in Sathorn in Bangkok. A good hospital with really good staff and good medical care. And a garuda mounted over its front entrance.

I was at the hospital from 9:15 AM to 1:00 PM and had eaten nothing since supper the day before because of the required blood work. When I left the hospital, I was headed for Subway (a required stop on all my trips to Bangkok) but on the way I decided to just eat at this sidewalk food stall. Got a really big, really good meal for a really good price.

The next morning I was up at 3:00 AM to get to the old Don Mueang Airport for an economy airline flight back home. In one of the main passenger areas there was this large Buddhist depiction, just to remind travelers that they are in Thailand!

November Trip to Bangkok

Tomorrow I go to see the surgeon in Bangkok who in May removed part of my kidney, for a six-month checkup. I suspect it will all be rather routine but it requires a trip to Bangkok. The beginning of that trip was not routine–beset by horrendous Phnom Penh traffic–but then, maybe that unfortunately is becoming routine also.

The first thirty minutes on the tuk-tuk ride to the airport were not so bad but then about a mile from the airport chaos reigned. This is on the street in front of the airport. These are the three westbound lanes with cars going in every direction, some trying to turn into the airport, others trying to turn around and go back the way they came. But the eastbound lanes are just the same. Gridlock.
This is a view back to the highway from inside the airport grounds. I sat in my tuk-tuk in that mess for about fifteen minutes and then paid off the driver and just walked between cars in the middle of the highway to the airport entrance.
These are cars and tuk-tuks trying to get out of the airport on to the highway.
Once I got in the airport, I checked in within three minutes. Finally it was time to board. This view from the jetway shows much less congestion on the airside of the airport.







I was on an economy airline and limited to just a carryon so I exited quickly, bought a Thailand SIM card, and headed for the airport bus stop. I took at A3 bus to Lumphini Park, the closest I could get by bus to the Maryknoll house. From the park I then took a taxi to Maryknoll. Today the the US dollar = 34.21 Thai baht so the 50-minute airport bus ride was 50 baht, about US$1.50.

An interesting Saturday…

Yesterday turned out to be a very interesting Saturday. President Biden flew in on Air Force One in the morning for the ASEAN summit meeting held in Phnom Penh this weekend. He is Catholic and I had read that he tries to go to mass on Sundays wherever he is, so I was not too surprised when the US Embassy here asked me to have mass with him yesterday. The time for the mass changed three times during the week but finally we had a morning mass at the Raffles Hotel where the United States delegation was staying.

President Biden is a very warm and personable person, a good human being guided by gospel values. We had a group of ten people for mass, staff from the White House and the Phnom Penh U.S. Embassy. At the end of mass, noting that it was lunch time, President Biden invited me to eat with them!
This is The Beast, the vehicle used to transport President Biden on the ground. It rated its own separate enclosure on the grounds of the Raffles Hotel. I was hoping they would offer me a ride home in The Beast but I had to settle for the usual tuk-tuk.
The U.S. delegation took over the entire Raffles Hotel and made many adjustments. Here the main lobby and reception desk is blocked off by partitions erected to move people like me through security. Secret Service personnel were everywhere!

Quite an interesting day!

Mission Sunday

This year Bishop Olivier invited the lay missioners working in Phnom Penh to attend mass with him on Mission Sunday. There are not nearly the numbers of lay missioners we had before.

After mass Bishop Olivier blessed the ashes of two veteran lay missioners who died here in the past year.
Then the lay missioners met for more than an hour with Bishop Olivier as he discussed his thought and plans for the diocese and for the missioners.
Before we left we had a group photo.