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.
The recent ordinations of Titus Tin Maung SJ and Joseph Aik Maung SJ were moments of joy and unity for the hard pressed ethnic communities that claim them as their own. They were also cause for celebration for the Society of Jesus as the two new priests are only the second and third Jesuit priests from Myanmar.
May 2nd marked the anniversary of the Cyclone Nargis which devastated the Delta in Myanmar, leaving around 150,000 dead and 2.4 million affected.
In Myanmar, 2.3 million people were affected by cyclone Nargis. Millions lost their shelter, especially the ‘squatters’ who did not have a land and occupied some of the unhealthy lands as their shelter base.
There were many others who lost their near and dear ones killed in the cyclone. Where the parents died, the children have aged overnight, thrust with the responsibility of surviving and supporting other siblings.