Lord, have mercy on us in the civil war here in the Kachin State of the Union of Myanmar. Our lives stopped on June 3, 2011, when government forces and the Kachin Independent Army began shooting at each other. It has meant more than 100,000 refugees, hunger, epidemics, destroyed farmland, fear and separated families.

Kachin people are being killed by the army of the ruling junta, but the military says nothing. Young girls are being raped and killed by the government soldiers. Young boys are arrested by the police. The police set traps for them. They tell them they are in the streets after curfew, but no curfew has ever been announced.

We don’t know when the fighting will stop. The Kachin Independent Army and the government forces are negotiating, but their discussions keep failing and the fighting goes on. We are just praying, but we do not know who will win. As an ethnic minority, we are an isolated and alienated people. In today’s world, where systems of technology, human rights, justice, personal freedom and transparency are being woven into societies all over the world, we are being alienated from own land, our own sources of income and our very right to exist.

This process began with the very first prime minister of Burma, Thakin Nu, in 1948. He dropped the name Thakin saying that in a Burmaised land it was not necessary. “Just call me U (Mr.) Nu,” he said. He was prime minister on and off right up to 1962 and we ethnic peoples did not exist in his Burmaisation vision.

As Kachins, we have never betrayed our country. As citizens, we have faithfully served this nation since it became independent from Britain. But successive governments have systematically and violently tried to extinguish the life of our very souls. We understand that if we are alienated from everything we hold near and dear, everything that gives us hope and the spark of imagination and life, we will die. To not be able to live freely is the same as death; everything is meaningless.

Today, our lives, our land, our Christian religion, our history, our traditions, our race, ethnicity and livelihood are horribly alienated by the military junta carrying out of its own policy of the Burmaisation of this land.

When our rights are alienated, it means that truth, democracy and the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights are dead.
Even God, our creator, is alienated and pushed beyond our grasp.

Lord, have mercy on us.

From a friend of Columban Fr. Jim Mulroney

Ryan Murphy, Columban Volunteer

After 60 years of violence and repression in Myanmar (Burma), hope continues to shine through. The most well known leader in democratic reform has been Aung San Suu Kyi. Besides being under house arrest for years, she persists in peaceful opposition to violence perpetrated by the government. Along with members of the Burmese Democracy Network, and 88 other groups, they have created a letter to the government. The letter asks the new President to declare a cease fire with all ethnic groups seeking autonomy, the release of all political prisoners and demands to solve political issues though dialogue. This bold action could result in arrest, torture or even death. In 1989 and in 2007, when civilians openly protested against the government, thousands died and even more were arrested.

While peaceful struggle for democracy enters another stage in Myanmar, the U.S. State Department has stepped up its engagement with the government. The U.S. Senateapproved an envoy to Myanmar that will start a dialogue with the isolated regime. Next month, HBO will début the documentary, “Burma Soldier,” which is critical of the repression. The film will hopefully increase awareness in the United States. The documentary depicted the story of a former soldier’s transformation to a democratic peace advocate. One soldier describes his early years in the military and how his fellow soldiers raped, beat and killed civilians.  After he was severely injured by an explosion, he realized he “had a voice.” Bravely speaking out for peace during the 1989 demonstration; he was imprisoned for 15 years.  The documentary gives a voice to the horrors he lived as a political prisoner.

Last week, many of us from the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach attended the premiere of “Burma Soldier” and a panel discussion at the U.S. State Department. For so long now, peace has been an illusion in Myanmar, still hope preservers. We pray for the Burmese people. God willing, all the new attention and activism will spur change. Nothing is impossible with faith, remember “thee with faith the size of a muster seed can move mountains” (Mathew 17:20).

After 60 years of violence and repression in Myanmar (Burma), hope continues to shine through. The most well known leader in democratic reform has been Aung San Suu Kyi. Besides being under house arrest for years, she persists in peaceful opposition to violence perpetrated by the government. Along with members of the Burmese Democracy Network, and 88 other groups, they have created a letter to the government. The letter asks the new President to declare a cease fire with all ethnic groups seeking autonomy, the release of all political prisoners and demands to solve political issues though dialogue. This bold action could result in arrest, torture or even death. In 1989 and in 2007, when civilians openly protested against the government, thousands died and even more were arrested.

While peaceful struggle for democracy enters another stage in Myanmar, the U.S. State Department has stepped up its engagement with the government. The U.S. Senate approved an envoy to Myanmar that will start a dialogue with the isolated regime. Next month, HBO will début the documentary, “Burma Soldier,” which is critical of the repression. The film will hopefully increase awareness in the United States. The documentary depicted the story of a former soldier’s transformation to a democratic peace advocate. One soldier describes his early years in the military and how his fellow soldiers raped, beat and killed civilians.  After he was severely injured by an explosion, he realized he “had a voice.” Bravely speaking out for peace during the 1989 demonstration; he was imprisoned for 15 years.  The documentary gives a voice to the horrors he lived as a political prisoner.

Last week, many of us from the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach attended the premiere of “Burma Soldier” and a panel discussion at the U.S. State Department. For so long now, peace has been an illusion in Myanmar, still hope preservers. We pray for the Burmese people. God willing, all the new attention and activism will spur change. Nothing is impossible with faith, remember “thee with faith the size of a muster seed can move mountains” (Mathew 17:20).

“I’m appointed as a formator in the seminary, but I have no training for it. We are expected to help young men to become spiritual leaders, but we don’t know how to go about it. Can you help us?”

Fr. Michael McGuire and Sr. Alice

This was the appeal of the rector of a diocesan seminary in Myitkyina, Myanmar, to Fr. Eamon O’Brien after a retreat in 2001. Fr. O’Brien won the support of Bishop Paul Grawng for this initiative. They formulated a proposal for a team of Columban formators to run a three year course for local formators and spiritual guides. Bishop Paul got the approval and backing for this proposal from the Conference of Bishops of Myanmar.

Thus a team consisting of Columban Fr. Michael McGuire, from the Philippines, Fr. Frank Hoare from Ireland and Columban Sister Mary Ita O’Brien, who was working already in Myanmar, began a four week intensive summer school in March 2003 in a diocesan center in Yangon. Twenty-two local formators—eleven Sisters, one Brother and ten priests—began the course.

Classes were held each morning on the psychology of vocation and the psychology of human development and spirituality. Difficulties were expected and experienced by both the students and the instructors. English was the third language of the participants, and they found the technical language of psychology and spirituality difficult to understand.

2009 formator group

The staff was frustrated when the participants spoke in inaudible whispers. However, everyone involved found ways to help one another. The participants, led by their more experienced members, often gathered in small groups in the evenings for a tutorial in Burmese language on the day’s classes. This spirit of cooperation strengthened the community spirit among them.

Unfortunately, the standard of education has deteriorated badly in Myanmar since the military takeover in 1962. Rote learning and parrot-like reproduction is demanded at all levels of education. Critical thought and creative expression are penalized even at the university level. All of this meant that we had to be realistic with our expectations of the participants even as we encouraged a different approach.

We were delighted by the openness of the course participants to the vocational growth conversations that we offered twice a week. In-depth sharing is difficult in Myanmar, because privacy and confidentiality are not a cultural priority. Fear of revealing deeper aspects of oneself are compounded by the informer system operated by the government in the country. However, the participants willingly grasped the opportunity of confidential sessions. In the second year these conversations moved towards counseling while in the third year the sessions were used for spiritual direction. Milltown Park Institute of Philosophy and Theology in Dublin agreed to credit the three-year course. It offered a Pontifical graduate certificate for participants with primary degrees who passed the summer school tests and completed essays during the year after the summer school. A Pontifi cal diploma was offered to students who, in addition to passing the tests, completed shorter projects between summer schools.

After the summer schools, the course participants met three times for one or two day workshops at which they shared experiences, practiced accompaniment skills and discussed their essays or projects. While living and working in Myanmar, Sr. Mary Ita was able to attend these sessions. The participants discussed plans for improving their formation programs and for supporting each other.

Fr. Michael McGuire and Sr. Mary Ita O’Brien

In 2004 during the second summer school we taught courses on counseling, sexuality and celibacy and introduction to spiritual direction. We offered counseling twice a week to the participants. In afternoon sessions they also practiced counseling each other in groups of three using the Burmese language.

We were happy to have the opportunity to conduct a one day workshop in March 2004 and a two day workshop in March 2005 for bishops, congregation leaders and some of the course participants. These took place immediately before the summer schools and promoted understanding and dialogue on formation issues between Church leaders and formators.

At the request of the participants, we moved the third summer school in March 2005 to the Salesian seminary in the cooler environment of Pyin Oo Lwin, two hours from Mandalay. This area previously was called Maymyo when it was a summer hill station retreat for the British colonial officers in the Raj.

During this final phase we taught courses on the “Message of Jesus,” “Personality Styles,” and the “Practice of Spiritual Direction.” Each participant had the opportunity of giving spiritual direction with supervision to two novices, Sisters or lay people living in the locality. The staff supervised by facilitating discussion in small groups of the verbatim interviews written by the participants. At the end of this summer school, three of the participants accepted invitations to join us on the staff of the next “Course in Religious Formation,” which began in March 2006. The participants of this fi rst course worked hard and recognize the benefit of the course for them. As one of them said, “I came to know myself better and I am more confident now of being able to help young religious to grow humanly and spiritually.”

The graduation of the first group of students was held at the Catholic Bishop Conference headquarters in Yangon on March 10, 2006. We continue the program with new participants and an expanded staff which includes Sr. Clara Chiang, a psychologist from Taiwan, as well as the three local graduates of the first course.

Fr. Frank Hoare lives and works in Fiji.

This article first appeared in the August / September issue of Columban Mission.

The CCAO has written letters asking the administration to support the commission, which will investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma.

Learn more about our missionary work in Burma

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/17/AR2010081706026.html?wprss=rss_world,

http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/17/an_end_to_engagement_us_to_push_for_burma_inquiry

Children in Myanmar

The Columbans went to Burma in the 1930s and stayed in the Diocese of Myitkyina in Kachin State until 1978 when those remaining were asked to leave. After the military takeover in 1962, when the name of the country was changed to Myanmar, any missionary who left the country was not allowed to return unless they had been in Myanmar prior to 1948. In order to continue their work in Myanmar, many Columbans stayed on for many years without returning home. Myanmar is now one of the poorest countries in the world. The country’s resources are being eaten up by the military and their international supporters.

The Columbans had set up some schools when they were in the diocese. However these schools were nationalized when the military took over. The military junta has systematically destroyed the education system, and teachers have very little incentive to teach. The so-called teachers are not qualified to teach the kids. Most of them are failed graduates from high school, as these are the only people who will stay in the remote areas for a salary equivalent to US $20.00 a month.

Myanmar children

The Columbans also set up boarding houses in many of the parishes. These boarding houses are still being used today. The children from the rural areas stay there and attend school. In the evenings they received extra tutoring and instruction in the catechism. Since the Church is no longer allowed to run schools, these boarding houses have become an important educational component for the Church. However, many of these boarding houses, especially those in the more remote areas, have become rundown.

Most of the boarding houses are in areas that foreigners are not allowed to visit.

When Columban Fr. Eamon Sheridan visited Myanmar, he was taken to see the “good” ones and found them to be in mostly very poor condition. The kids have just two meals a day, breakfast and then an evening meal. Providing these meals is a struggle for the local priests as they juggle the many other demands on limited and sometimes non-existent resources. Many of the boarding houses don’t have toilets or washing facilities.

Project Mission

Most of the people in the diocese are extremely poor and engage in unstable jobs for low pay. Farming, livestock raising, working as street vendors and other very difficult and low paying jobs are all that is available to them. Many of the young people leave school at early ages to work for their families’ survival. Education is vital to break the cycle of poverty in Myanmar. Current estimates place the adult illiteracy rate at 89.7% for the population. In Myanmar, compulsory education ends at age 9 compared to the international level which is age 16.

Although not technically schools, the boarding houses function as schools offering tutoring in addition to pastoral care for all students. Improving the physical condition of the boarding houses, increasing the funds available for food and medical care for the students and teachers, offering training programs for boarding masters and offering scholarships to students are the top priorities.

Funding and Sustainability

Myanmar children

Due to the grinding poverty under which the majority population of Myanmar lives, the project must be funded by benefactors. The military junta ruling Myanmar will not allocate funds to anything other than the government-run schools. It is the hope that education will provide the pathway out of poverty for future generations. With education come better employment opportunities which can lift entire villages out of poverty, one person, one family at a time.

Columban Fathers Neil Magill and Victor Gaboury (in back row) with Bishop Francis Daw Nang (in between them) and seminarians in the Diocese of Myitkyina in Myanmar in 2003.

A mountainous jungle area, roughly the size of Indiana, meant traveling on foot or pony with a pack mule to carry supplies. Hikes of five to ten hours in a steamy jungle were the norm as the priests set out to develop mission stations in distant villages.

They concentrated their efforts mainly among the Kachin tribal people whose belief in spirits made them more open to the Gospel message. But three Columbans were assigned to work among the Shans, who were Buddhists.

In the three years before World War II, 18 more Columbans joined the mission. In 1942, when the Japanese invaded Burma, 21 were arrested and interned in Mandalay. Two of the remaining four escaped into China and two managed to remain in the hills with their people. On the day Mandalay was liberated, four of those interned were injured by a stray shell, and one of them died later as a result of his injuries.

When the war ended in 1945, missions and schools were reopened, ruined churches and dwellings rebuilt, new areas explored and two high schools were opened. The Columban Sisters, who arrived in 1947, opened a boarding school for girls in Myitkyina and later a clinic in a remote jungle village.

In 1948, Burma became an independent nation and the government limited the number of Catholic missionaries in the country. At that time, 30 Columban priests and six Columban Sisters were working in the Kachin State. During the following 18 years, 10 Columban priests and four Columban Sisters were allowed to replace those who had died or who had to leave because of illness.

Columban Father Bernard Way instructs Kachin boys in Burma in how to sing Gregorian chants.

New parishes and schools were opened. By the end of 1952, the number of baptized Catholics had grown to 7,000 with an additional 5,000 catechumens. Six years later, there were 13,000 Catholics and about 7,000 catechumens, 19 brick and wooden churches, a number of clinics and a school system.

As the number of Catholics grew, more and more catechists were trained. Many resided in widely scattered out-villages. The priests, too, were spread over a wider territory; 13 in one-man parishes. In 1960, the Prefecture of Bhamo became a diocese and the newly ordained bishop became bishop of Myitkyina, the capital of the Kachin State.

The ’60s saw the insurrection of the Kachin Independence Army that sought to create an independent Kachin State. In 1965, the government nationalized all the mission schools. The parishes continued to maintain the boarding section of the two high schools as hostels for boys and girls from the hills and provided many vocations for the priesthood and religious life.

The following year missionaries who had entered Burma after 1948 were forced to leave the country. This left 21 Columban priests and no Columban Sisters.

Realizing that their days in Burma were numbered, the Columbans devoted their energies to the formation of local priests, Sisters, catechists and lay leaders. In this way, they hoped to leave a self-reliant Church when they were forced to leave.

In 1977, the diocese was handed over to Bishop Zinghtung Grawng, the first Kachin to be ordained a priest. When the Columbans withdrew from Burma in 1979, Bishop Grawng, not yet 40 years old, had a dozen Kachin priests, some 40 Sisters from two congregations and a very active laity.

In the 2000s, Columbans have returned, in a limited capacity, to Burma, now called Myanmar, especially in Myitkyina where Columbans Sisters have established ministries, including one addressing the nation’s growing HIV-AIDS problem. Columban Fathers have helped with the formation of young seminarians in Myitkyina, as well.

With continuing Columban support and in spite of many hardships resulting from the ongoing unstable political situation, the Kachin Church will continue to grow as a mature apostolic community.

When I first went to Myitkyina, Myanmar, in 2002, I was overwhelmed by the great need of the people for decent health care. Those suffering from HIV-AIDS, it seemed, were among the most-neglected people. What could I, as a missionary and a nurse, do to help?

I started with intensive HIV-AIDS courses in London, working with homeless HIV-AIDS people in Dublin, Ireland, and, upon my return to Myanmar, attending seminars about the disease.

A plan emerged: I would help set up a home-care team to visit people in their homes, offer them simple treatments and, not least important, help them regain their self-respect and dignity by showing them friendship and care.

Lucia, a Kachin woman who had wide experience in health care in Myitkyina, became my co-worker. We contacted catechists and Catholic women’s groups in different parishes. People quickly got to know us and our ministry.

A big difficulty was connecting with hospitals; we had first-hand experience of the rejection of patients with HIV-AIDS.

We approached the Médicines Sans Frontiéres (Doctors Without Borders) organization in the Yuzana Quarter area of Myitkyina, and its members proved willing to help, offering a holistic approach to the people. We have formed strong bonds with the staff there.

To get started, we first had to draw up a budget. Thanks to the generosity of our benefactors, we were able to purchase an old car, some equipment and basic medicine, and off we went.

A Frightening Reality

A young HIV-AIDS sufferer talked with Sr. Mary Dillon and Lucia (right) during their weekly visit. About 330,000 Burmese people, about 1.2 percent of Myanmar’s population, are infected with HIV-AIDS. Women in particular are at high risk.

People ask me if there is much HIV-AIDS in Myanmar. According to the National Health Plan of Myanmar, HIV-AIDS is ranked third among 39 listed diseases. The virus is spreading through the general population at shocking rates: about 330,000 Burmese people (about 1.2 percent of the population) have HIV-AIDS, including about 97,000 women from ages 15-49 and about 7,600 children, according to U.S. Agency for International Development statistics.

Women who are sex workers and/or inject drugs are at the highest risk, according to the agency.

Some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) say that in every village at least one person has the virus. Last year the United Nations warned of the imminent threat of HIV-AIDS to Southeast Asia, which includes Myanmar. It’s a frightening reality, and our work is but a drop in the ocean.

Lucia and I quickly realized that most HIV-AIDS sufferers had no form of health care and did not know about services offered by NGO groups. We saw, too, that with good food, supervision and support, the quality of the lives of HIV-AIDS patients could be enhanced.

Opportunistic diseases associated with the virus could be treated, and this would also ease the patients’ suffering. We had medicines for tuberculosis, thrush, shingles, skin conditions, diarrhea, etc.

It was important to teach a patient’s relatives how best to look after their sick loved one by providing good hygiene, nourishing food, pain relievers and other comforts. But, above all, we taught them to treat their sick relatives with kindness and respect.

I found during my involvement in the home-care program that our efforts made a significant difference, not only to the life of the patient, but to the whole family. No longer rejected, the sufferer begins to play an active role in his or her treatment.

A Life Of Violence & Rejection
Ba Nu was only 19 when she died from AIDS. A gentle, intelligent girl, with the sweetest smile imaginable, she bore her sufferings with patience and serenity. But how, I asked myself, did she come to such a sad end?

Her grandmother told us a story of violence and rejection. Her beloved daughter, Ba Nu’s mother, died unexpectedly when the child was 2 years old. She took the child in, and Ba Nu was brought up to respect people—to be truthful and honest.

It was a poor but happy existence, which came to an end when her grandmother could no longer afford to pay for rice to feed her. In her early teens, she was sent to an aunt in Mandalay.

This woman had a tearoom and treated her niece as unpaid labor, keeping her out of the family circle. The sensitive girl felt the bitterness of this rejection and ran away. Soon after, she contracted HIV-AIDS.

Ba Nu’s disease was advanced when I met her. We put her in touch with an international group working against the spread of HIV-AIDS, and its staff did much to improve her quality of life.

Every day, Lucia and I went to visit Ba Nu. We always came away marveling at her graciousness, even though the disease had ravaged her frail body.

One day she took our hands in hers and said, “You are the only life I have now, and I can never thank you enough for your friendship.”

I was deeply moved and not a little humbled. Her gratitude embraced us until the day she died.

She wanted to know what a “Sister” was and what it meant. Lucia, a married woman, told her of our way of life.

She then wanted to pray, but how? Lucia told her, “Just say in your heart, ‘God, I love you,’ and He will show you.” And He did.

As Ba Nu’s life drew to a close, her grandmother finally got her father to come see her. He sat outside the house for four days, never went in, never laid his eyes on his dying daughter, never spoke to anyone.

When Ba Nu died, her father gave the grandmother the price of the coffin and went away. Rejected in death as in life, Ba Nu is but one of thousands who die of AIDS in Myanmar.

Pray that we may be able to help these forgotten, unwanted people not only with medicine but with friendship and compassion.

By Sr. Mary Dillon

Peter is a typical student, and not just because he studies hard and conscientiously and has the same goal as his companions. Peter, like his fellow students, contributes to the daily cost of putting food in their common pot. All the students at St. Patrick’s Pre-Major Seminary in Myitkyina, Myanmar, lend a hand in providing for their everyday needs.

The chores are just part of the challenging life these young seminarians have chosen in a nation that is 89 percent Buddhist and 1 percent Catholic. The main task for St. Patrick’s students is learning English so they can take the entrance exam to the National Major Seminary. Their parish priests support their efforts to get admitted to study for the priesthood in the Diocese of Myitkyina.

The daily chores vary: One keeps an eye on the hens and their broods that scratch, pick and scrape the land along the Ayeyarwady River where the students live and study.

Peter La Nu and others took English classes from Fr. John Colgan in their Myitkyina seminary. The classes are needed to take the entrance exam for the National Major Seminary where the seminarians study to be Myitkyina Diocese priests.

Another has an easier job: he looks after the ducks. The ducks and their ducklings don’t waddle around much, preferring to play in puddles beside the well or hang around the kitchen door in hopes of pot scrapings. Others feed three pigs being fattened for the school’s most-important feast or take charge of the two dogs and their regular litter of pups.

Still others work in the vegetable garden, growing cabbage and mustard plants that are the most-popular greens in their diet. The compound’s several banana plants provide fruit, and the plants’ stalks are fed to the pigs. Potatoes and squash are planted on an Ayeyarwady island when the water subsides in November. The tropical climate, rich alluvial soil, and rapid plant growth keep the student gardeners busy controlling weeds.

The director of St. Patrick’s Pre-Major Seminary, Fr. John Naw Lawn, encourages the students to contribute to their meals and the seminary’s general upkeep.

“Everyone is responsible for the well-being of the student body and the tidiness of the compound,” he says.

Fr. John also insists that the seminarians leave time for recreation. The students swim in the Ayeyarwady when the river is low. Even when the monsoon rain falls by the bucketful, they play soccer or cane ball, a popular derivative of soccer played with bare feet.

The students also enjoy recreational reading, music and singing. Their Saturday treat is a video played on a battery-powered television set.

Mastering Languages
In all, they are 30 young men between the ages of 19 and 24 who come from several tribal groups and speak Burmese, Jingpaw (the language of the Kachin people) and usually one or two minor languages as well. For some, English is as difficult and as foreign as Burmese, the national language imposed by the military government that has ruled the nation under different names for more than five decades.

Others take to English readily, perhaps because their ethnic group’s mother tongue disposes them to recognize and reproduce English sounds more easily. All of them enjoy a sense of achievement when they open their mouths and ears to hear themselves speak and understand a tongue that must sound strange.

In addition to studying English, students must complete a correspondence course before they begin philosophy studies in the Major Seminary.

For about 10 days each year, they attend lectures in their chosen subjects at the local university. Payment for their courses is made directly by each student to their lecturers and examiners. No one has been known to fail.

The seminarians’ world is full of hurdles not related to academics: poverty and disease are no strangers, and they labor without adequate facilities and resources, such as classrooms with proper lighting, audio laboratory equipment and modern English-language textbooks.

Many students suffer regular bouts of malaria, one of the diseases endemic in their tropical homeland. Most resort to traditional remedies to cure whatever ails them.

All seem to be able to face whatever life throws at them with patience and equanimity. They shrug their shoulders and say, “It doesn’t matter.” Perhaps when you are their age, it is most important to reach the goals you have set with everything else taking a lower priority.

Columban Father John Colgan of Ireland taught English at Myitkyina’s St. Patrick’s Pre-Major Seminary in 2004 and 2005.

In 1966, all foreign religious missionaries who had come to Burma after January 4, 1948, (Burma’s independence day from England) were forced to leave. Those who had arrived before 1948 could stay on, but no new seminaries could enter the nation.

The last three Columban missionaries to leave had not been to their home countries for at least 16 years.

The Catholic Directory of Myanmar states:

A family in eastern Myanmar.

“The Columban Fathers realized with intuition that the time had come for them to hand over the government of the Diocese [of Myitkyina] to the Kachin clergy. On April 3rd 1976 Bishop Paul Grawng was consecrated Bishop. The following year Bishop [John] Howe handed over the care of the Church in Myitkyina Diocese to the indigenous clergy who then numbered only ten and left for home. The rest of the Columban Fathers withdrew in 1979.”

Early on, Columbans discussed the legacy they wanted to leave in Burma. In August 1979, Bishop Howe wrote that the establishment of an indigenous Church became a top priority for Columban work in Burma as far back as the mid-1950s.

Fr. Tony O’Brien, the Columban superior general in 1979, wrote that there was a certain sadness in this final departure from Burma.

Yet, he acknowledged we had played our part in developing a local Christian community with its own leaders. The outside pressures did not so much hinder our work but rather laid before us an urgent challenge and helped us establish and follow a set of priorities.

In hindsight, we can see the faith and wisdom of that early vision and the phased withdrawal in the ’70s. The legacy was intact.

Myanmar Facts (2005 statistics)
Population: 42.91 million
Median age: 26.14 years
Life expectancy: 60.7 years
People living with HIV-AIDS: 330,000*
HIV-AIDS deaths: 20,000*
Ethnic groups: Burman 68%, Shan 9%, Kachin 7%, Rakhine 4%, Chinese 3%, Indian 2%, Mon 2%, other 5%
Religions: Buddhist 89%, Christian 4% (Baptist 3%, Roman Catholic 1%),
Muslim 4%, animist 1%, other 2%
Literacy rate (15 years and older): 85.3%**
Name change: Since 1989, military authorities in the country have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their nation. The name is not recognized by the U.S. government.
Government: Military junta
*2003 estimates
**2002 estimates
Source: CIA – The World Factbook 2005

Today, the Catholic Church in Myanmar has gradually gained momentum in its evangelization work. It’s one of the few Southeast Asia nations where all Catholic priests and Religious are natives.

But since the Church in Myanmar has been isolated from the rest of the world for so long, it has asked Columbans and others for help. One way we have assisted the Church is to provide personnel to educate seminarians and priests and give retreats and courses on formation for Sisters, priests and brothers.

The Myanmar bishops asked the Columbans to provide staff members for a new missionary seminary they had just established. Since 2003, two Columbans are teaching English and philosophy at this seminary.

In 2004, other Columbans arrived. They teach and give retreats to seminarians, do social work and are involved in HIV-AIDS ministries. Others are considering what contribution they can make.

We are happy to help the local Myanmar Catholic Church and respond to its new needs. I doubt Columbans would have foreseen this when they left Burma in 1979, but they no doubt would have been pleased that we can now help the Church grow in new ways.

Columban Father Neil Magill of Ireland was ordained in 1973 and has worked as a missionary in Korea and Taiwan. He now is a member of the Columban General Council, the Columban society’s leadership body.