VIENTIANE (UCAN): Catholic faithful in Laos joined clergy and religious to celebrate the dedication of a new church to Blessed Paul Thoj Xyooj, the first layperson from the ethnic Hmong community who was martyred for his faith six decades ago.
The church was dedicated at Ban Nam Gnam village in Thulakhom district of Vientiane province, Fides reported.
Born in 1941, Paul Thoj Xyooj was a Laotian teacher and catechist. He was killed by communist guerrillas in 1960 along with Italian Oblates of Mary Immaculate [OMI] Father Mario Borzaga.
Pope Francis proclaimed them martyrs in 2015. Both were beatified on 11 December 2016, along with 15 other martyrs in Laotian capital, Vientiane, by the pope’s special envoy, Oblate Cardinal Orlando Quevedo, archbishop of Cotabato in the Philippines.
OMI congregation, communist forces killed 17 Catholics between 1954 and 1970: a young Laotian priest, five priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, six Oblate priests [an Italian and five French] and five Laotian laypeople.
Italian Oblate Father Angelo Pelis, who served in Laos for years as a missionary, informed Fides that the consecration of the new church was presided over by Louis-Marie Cardinal Ling Mangkhanekhoun, the apostolic vicar of Vientiane. Other priests and Laotian Catholics also attended.
Church leaders say the new church has boosted the small Catholic community in the country.
Laos has an estimated population of seven million, and while Christianity is a recognised religion in the country, it is a minority faith and many Buddhists view it as an alien faith. In rural areas, Christians are routinely victimised for their faith and the expulsion of Christians by other villagers is common.
There are about 60,000 Catholics in Laos, mostly ethnic Vietnamese and other ethnic groups like the Hmong, concentrated in surrounding areas along the Mekong River.
The Lao Church has four bishops but no dioceses with the faithfill spread across four apostolic vicariates.
Catholic missionaries, beginning with the Jesuits, made several attempts to evangelise in Laos starting in 1630. However, they didn’t succeed.
However, missionaries of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, who came to Laos in 1878, were more successful and set up an indigenous Church. They founded their first mission station on 8 December 1885.
The Oblate congregation arrived in 1935 and concentrated its missionary work mostly in the mountainous tribal areas in the north of the country.
