February 24 was a day of grace for Myanmar Jesuit Mission. It received the gift of a new local Jesuit priest with the ordination of Stephen Mar Tay. Fr Mar Tay is only the fourth Myanmar Jesuit priest. It was … Continued
Fr Mark Raper SJ, Superior of the Myanmar Jesuits, writes of the meeting of Pope Francis with his brother Jesuits in Yangon during his visit to Myanmar from November 27 to 30, 2017. The private conversation with Pope Francis … Continued
“What we saw and experienced in the camps was beyond comprehension,” reported Fr Dunstan Vinny Joseph SJ, Socius of the Myanmar Jesuit Mission upon returning from a visit to the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh. “The new arrivals, who have already … Continued
On September 29, St Michael’s Parish in Nanhlaing village in Banmaw Diocese was formally entrusted to the care of the Jesuits. The handover ceremony was timed to coincide with the feast of the parish patron saint, St Michael the Archangel. … Continued
In May 2015, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) approached the Jesuits in Jakarta for the help of Myanmar scholastics as translators for its interviews with Myanmar citizens who had been enslaved in the Thai fishing industry. Several scholastics did so, among them Simon Kam Sian Muan, who is now back in Myanmar for his Regency. He shares here what he learnt from the experience.
The Archbishop of Yangon, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, delivered an inspiring talk to the students and staff of Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school in the United Kingdom, when he visited on Saturday May 21. He spoke of the role of the Catholic Church and the struggle for religious freedom in his country Myanmar.
Since the historic elections in November 2015, there has been a wave of optimism for national reconciliation, which may allow for Burmese refugees who fled to camps on the Thailand-Myanmar border decades ago to return.
The fury and ferocity of floods becomes more amplified when one sees the situation first hand. The data, descriptions and dashboards of information fail to project the face of people and their experience at the ground level. At the invitation of the Bishop of Kalay (Sagaing division – the place that took the brunt of floods), we visited Kalay. As the plane descends (roads are still to be repaired) an eerie scenario unfolds. A vast expanse of clay mud covers hundreds of acres where there were once villages and flourishing farming communities. Only water now.
The landfall on July 30 of Cyclone Komen in Bangladesh brought strong winds and heavy rains to Myanmar, particularly to Rakhine and Chin States and Sagaing and Magway Regions in western Myanmar. More than one meter (40 inches) of rain that followed turned the floods into a major natural disaster. On August 3, the Ministry of Agriculture stated that 525,895 acres of farmland had been submerged. The Relief and Resettlement Department (RRD) of the Government of Myanmar put the number of deaths at 63 and displaced people at 200,000. But newspapers (e.g.
At Kanyintabin village, a community nestled on the bank of the vast Pyamalaw River, Jesuit Scholastic Cyril Nay Myo Htet, better known as Phocho, sat down with a group of farmers on a hot December afternoon, a mug of sweetened instant coffee in his hand. This was the time of the year when they harvested the yields of their toil and sweat.