Monsignor Enrique Figaredo Alvargonzales recently celebrated his 10th anniversary as head of the Battambang apostolic prefecture.
However, even before his installation, he had been working with Cambodians, particularly those with disabilities, as early as 1985 through the Jesuit Refugee Service in Thailand.
The Spanish-born Jesuit priest, in an interview, speaks about the needs of the 5,000 Catholics in his Church territory, which covers nine provinces in western Cambodia, as well as the Church’s main priorities here.
Q: How has the church in Battambang progressed over the past 10 years?
A: The Church has developed a lot. We have a lot of activities to improve the lives of villagers, such as building primary schools, supporting children in their studies and serving poor sick people. All these because of Catholics’ involvement in society. Also many priests and nuns from various congregations and societies work with us.
Q: What are your top priorities?
A: I saw that people needed education, so education is our priority. We focus on literacy and general education from kindergarten to primary level for poor children. At least they can read and count and they know how to have good relations with other people in society.
At present, we support youths for their high-school and university studies. A few of them have the chance to go abroad for leadership courses.
In our efforts to promote education, we also promote Khmer traditional dance because we realize the value of Khmer culture. Young people, including Catholics, who love their own country must love its arts.
Another priority is catechism. Every year, we have had about 100 adult baptisms. This year we have about 200. We lack catechists even though we have a lot of catechism materials.
Catechism is not only teaching [a subject] like in school. Since a few years ago, we have been organizing camps, lasting a few days, every six months for our catechists. I think this is not enough.
Q: What are you doing to improve on this?
A: We want to set up a school to give professional training to catechists. But the problem is we cannot afford to pay catechists the same rates as professional teachers. They cannot live on being catechists alone.
On the other hand, we have lot of young people who work with us. They like to learn skills other than teaching catechism. They are very much involved in the Church until they set up a family.
My other plan is to have married Catholics actively involved in the Church.
The lack of funds has also limited our activities. Some of our programs are possible due to overseas funding. Local Catholics are mostly farmers who earn very little.
Besides these issues, we need inclusive development among Catholics to help them combat poverty.
When we talk about development, it has to include participation from marginalized people such as widows, orphans, children with disabilities and people living with HIV. We have to motivate them to be involved in the Church as much as they possibly can. We keep them in mind.
Q: What do you do to support these marginalized people?
A: We have a learning center for children with disabilities, a sewing program for women and a health-care center for poor, sick people. We support orphans and poor children in attending school, and build schools and hostels.
We also have poor families working on Church-owned rice fields. This helps to stop them from going across the border to look for work. For people who come out of prison, we give them work.
In all these activities, I would say we are so far 50 percent successful.
Q: Is the Church doing something about environmental issues and climate change?
A: We have seen a lot of problems resulting from climate change. In the last three years, we have had a campaign to educate people about the environment. We plant trees, clean our villages and churches, and keep the garbage in the right places.
In the rice fields, we focus on how to store water for longer use. Our partners such as Caritas Cambodia hold short courses on how to deal with natural disasters.
We not only speak about the physical environment but also build peace in the social environment – we encourage people to listen and talk to each other.
Q: What further plans do you have for this prefecture?
A: We have to continue to improve our work in education. We also ought to do more in the field of interreligious dialogue. We plan to hold common prayers with Buddhists and Muslims.
At present, we have good relations with Buddhist monks but we don’t have any joint actions yet. This is what we will do.
By Keo Kagnha, Battambang
July 15, 2010
Source: http://www.ucanews.com/2010/07/15/education-poverty-in-church-leaders-sights/