Fr Joseph read the Conclusion presented to the Salesians in Cambodia, after a flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh with the Provincial Economer Br. Thanad Anan John Baptist for the final meeting. It was a journey of more than 5 thousand km inside the territories of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, the latter with a single Salesian house in the Capital.

He visited every one of the 14 canonical communities with their great diversity of their pastoral, educational and missionary realities, including technical schools, parishes, youth centres, pastoral works with indigenous young people and others. Most of the communities are in Thailand with 14 canonical communities, including two in Cambodia and one in Laos. Salesians arrived in Thailand for the first time on 25 October 1927 and it was erected as a Province on 20 December 1937, Fr Gaetano Passoti being the first visitor and Fr Giovanni Casseta the first provincial starting in 1938. The current Provincial is Fr Anthony Boonlert. In 2027 the THA Province is getting ready to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Salesians. Br. Roberto Panetto opened some humanitarian educational works at the Cambodian refugee camps at the Thai border in 1989, opening the way for the entrance of the Congregation in Cambodia in 1991.

Fr Joseph underlined the dedication and commitment of the 16 missionaries, including some locals: 11 working, 2 retired (on wheelchair or in bed) and 4 in initial formation. He congratulated the missionaries because even if Christianity is a tiny minority, there are already some native vocations in Cambodia, with the hope that next year there will be the first Cambodian Salesian priest: “Let us sow the seeds and let the Master of the field make them grow by his Divine Force (the Spirit) and harvest them with the later generations of missionaries,” he said.

• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
• Title Title
•  

Tweet