BATTAMBANG (UCAN): Catholics in Cambodia joined hands with Buddhists to strengthen dialogue, fraternity and interfaith relations as they observe the month-long Season of Creation according to Fides, the news agency of the Pontifical Mission Society
As part of the bonding, Catholic priests and Buddhist monks started to meet up and plant trees together beginning on September 1. The Season of Creation runs until October 4.
“We all have the responsibility to protect the common home in which we live,” Monsignor Enrique Figaredo, apostolic prefect of Battambang, said.
The monsignor invited the faithful in Battambang to celebrate the season in the spirit of Laudato Si’, the groundbreaking 2015 encyclical of Pope Francis in which he called on people to care for their common home.
Monsignor Figaredo said that “we live the joyful experience of collaborating with Buddhist monks for the good of the environment, of society, side by side, united for a better future.”
He noted that for five years, Catholics and Buddhists have taken the initiative to care for the territory and set an example to all citizens, of any religious creed, adding that it is important to pass on a similar commitment to the younger generation.
“It is a question of love for life: if we love our life and that of our neighbour, we must protect and take care of the environment as it is a gift we have received from God, it is the work of his hands,” Monsignor Figaredo said.
“Even though we have different faiths, nationalities, ethnic groups and cultures, we are human beings, all called to work together for unity and solidarity,” he said.
Dominican Friar Gaspar da Cruz, from Portugal, brought the Catholic faith to Cambodia in 1555-56, according to Church sources, but he didn’t succeed in converting many people to Christianity.
It is a question of love for life: if we love our life and that of our neighbour, we must protect and take care of the environment as it is a gift we have received from God. It is the work of his hands
Photo UCAN/supplied
Despite French colonisation in the 19th century, Christianity has had little influence in the country. According to Vatican statistics, Catholics in the country numbered 120,000 in 1953, of which 50,000 were Vietnamese, making Christianity the second largest religion at the time.
In 1972, there were about 20,000 Christians in Cambodia, mostly Catholics. Before the repatriation of the Vietnamese in 1970 and 1971, possibly as many as 62,000 Catholics lived in Cambodia.
Catholicism almost withered away due to deadly political upheavals, civil war and the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime [1975-79] when an estimated 1.5 to two million people, or about 15 per cent of the population of Cambodia, were killed though political executions, disease, hunger and forced labour.
Missionaries returned in the early 1990s and revived the Church following the Paris Agreement that marked the end of the civil war.
Today Cambodia has some 20,000 Catholics, accounting for just 0.13 per cent of some 16 million people. It has no dioceses but has one apostolic vicariate and two apostolic prefectures.
