Jesuit Refugee Service /USA will commemorate 35 years of working alongside refugees and the displaced on December 1, and present Sr Denise Coghlan RSM with the JRS Accompany Award. Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ founded JRS in November 1980, in response to the exodus of refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia.
After the release of Laudato si’ in May and the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific’s response in July, the Jesuits in Cambodia met to reflect on the Holy Father’s encyclical and how they can respond to his call through their ministries.
The Jesuits, volunteers, religious sisters, and Khmer collaborators of Jesuit Mission Cambodia welcome and support the latest encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (On Care for Our Common Home).
Dear friends,
At last week’s assembly of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific the major superiors reflected on Laudato si’ and issued a declaration that seeks to animate a lively response in Asia Pacific. We urge all Jesuits in our Conference, our colleagues, and all those we seek to serve, to make a thoughtful and generous response to Pope Francis’ plea to reconcile with creation, which is one of our apostolic priorities.
We, the major superiors of the Jesuit Conference Asia Pacific, sincerely and enthusiastically welcome Pope Francis’ new encyclical Laudato si’ (On the Care of Our Common Home). He draws attention to the urgent need for reconciliation with creation, already one of our apostolic priorities in Asia Pacific. We urge all the members of our Conference, our colleagues, and all those we seek to serve to make a thoughtful and generous response to the Holy Father’s plea.
Banteay Prieb, a Jesuit vocational training centre in Cambodia, is launching an education program for people with intellectual disabilities next month. The program, which begins with 11 students, builds on the centre’s 23 years of experience serving people with physical disabilities as a result of war, land mines, polio and accidents.
The Jesuits in Cambodia have proposed a fast from pollution this Lent. Why pollution? Their response is that “Pollution weakens our bodies and makes us vulnerable to many diseases such as diarrhoea, chest infections, cancers, respiratory and heart diseases. And the people most likely to be affected first are the poor, due to their already limited access to clean water, clean food and clean air. The poor suffer first.”
In support of this, they provide the following facts:
An inter-religious ceremony was recently held to bless the land for the Xavier Jesuit School Project. Msgr Enrique (Kike) Figaredo SJ, Apostolic Prefect of the Battambang Prefecture in Cambodia presided with His Excellency, Mr Oum Reatrey, the Vice-Governor of Banteay Meanchey Province with responsibility for Education, at the ceremony which took place on January 29, 2015, in a temporary tent erected for the purpose on top of the land-fill just opposite the site where the foundations of the first building are already being constructed.
Jesuit Refugee Service Cambodia has released a video about its mission of accompaniment. To accompany means “To be a friend, to walk alongside, to share stories, to learn from one another, to care,” it explains.
Forty-five Cambodian children with disabilities will be running the Angkor Wat Half-Marathon on December 7 to call for the ban of cluster munitions. The children are from the Arrupe Karuna Welcome Centre, a foster home for poor children with disabilities, many caused by these explosive weapons.
Red, a former military man, lost his legs in 1982. The cause? A land mine – one of many the Khmer Rouge scattered in various parts of Cambodia during its rule.
At 53, Red now works with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), counselling families who have also been affected by these explosives. On November 4, he took Bishop-elect of Salford and Auxiliary Bishop in Westminster, John Arnold, to a militarised zone at the Thai border to visit three of these families.