CAMBODIA Clergy Retreat Surfaces Positive Feedback, Much Hope For New Pope

Posted: 26th April 2005

New pope Benedict XVI

PHNOM PENH (UCAN) -- As a group of Catholic priests in Cambodia began their annual retreat, they were given an opportunity to reflect on how the election of Pope Benedict XVI offers "new hope" to their local Church.
The retreat led by Father Lucien Legrand, a missioner of the Paris Foreign Mission Society (MEP) serving in India, took place April 20-26 at a retreat house near the sea in Sihanoukville, 180 kilometers southwest of Phnom Penh. Father Legrand's talks stressed that "mission is the heart of the Church."

Bishop Emile Destombes, apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh and also an MEP member, said in his introduction that news about the new pope's election has brought joy and renewed hope to the whole Church in Cambodia.
He also told the 36 retreatants: "I invite you to be deeply united with the universal Church these days in an attitude of thanksgiving. Pray the Holy Spirit specially helps the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, in his ministry of leading the Church, so he can face the challenges the Church now faces."
For the priests, the challenges facing the Cambodia Church are evident in numbers and public perceptions. The Church is small -- according to Church statistics, only 19,000 Catholics among 12 million people. Moreover, only five of the 50 priests active in Cambodia are native Cambodians.
The local Church still struggles to rebuild itself after the devastating civil war in the first half of the 1970s and the brutality of the communist regime led by Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979. Under the rule of his Khmer Rouge, all seven native Cambodian priests and all native Religious nuns lost their lives. They were among the nearly 2 million deaths attributed to Pol Pot.
As for public perceptions of the Church, Father Bruno Cosme, rector of the major seminary in Phnom Penh, says many Cambodians see Christianity as a religion from Vietnam because many local Catholics are ethnic Vietnamese.
He told UCA News that the news about the death of Pope John Paul II and his successor's election became an unexpected chance for Cambodians, many for the first time, to hear about the Catholic Church and Christianity in an international context, not just tied to Vietnamese culture. "Many Cambodians now understand that the Church is universal," the MEP priest said.

The rector added that the new pope's election also is "significant for Cambodia, given the great emphasis that Pope Benedict promised to give interreligious dialogue," as he clearly stated in his first homily as pope.
Father Olivier Schmitthaeusler, an MEP confrere working in the apostolic vicariate of Phnom Penh and a local pioneer in education, told UCA News that the death of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict's election offer young Catholic communities all over the country a chance to awaken. "These two events will bear good fruit in our Church in Cambodia if we know how to utilize this occasion for internal renewal," he asserted.
Jesuit Monsignor Enrique Figaredo, the apostolic prefect of Battambang, offered his own comment to UCA News. He said, "Our spiritual retreat just after the election of the new pope has given all of us priests serving the Church in Cambodia a new force, a renewal of our missionary commitment."
Father Gerald Vogin, an MEP missioner, summed up the week-long gathering in this way, "It has helped us remember that the one who really acts is the Holy Spirit and we are 'simple workers in God's vineyard,'" paraphrasing the new pope's description of himself just after he was elected.

The priests ended their retreat sensing that Pope Benedict's election, as reported in local television and other media, has helped Cambodians better understand the Catholic Church and that the Buddhist-majority country views favorably the new pope's intention of pursuing interreligious dialogue.

Article Source: UCAN and C.S.C.