PHNOM PENH (UCAN): More than 3,000 Catholics in Cambodia participated in a Mass commemorating clergy, religious, and laypeople who were martyred by the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s.
The event was held in the Tang Kork District, Kampong Thom Province, about 100 kilometres from the capital, Phnom Penh, on June 17, Catholic Cambodia reported.
During the programme, Church officials called the martyrs the “fathers” of today’s Catholic community in Cambodia.
“The testimony of the martyrs guides us along the way” Bishop Olivier Schmitthaeusler, the apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh, said.
Bishop Enrique Figaredo Alvargonzález, the apostolic prefect of Battambang; Bishop Pierre Suon Hangly, the apostolic prefect of Kompong-Cham; priests, nuns, and laity attended the Mass in remembrance of the Cambodian Martyrs.
In 2015, the Cambodian Church opened the diocesan phase of the beatification process for Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas and 34 other martyrs who were killed between 1970 and 1977 by the Khmer Rouge during the persecution of the Catholic Church by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, Catholic Cambodia reported.
Father Paul Roeung Chatsirey, the postulator of the cause of beatification and Paris Foreign Missions Society mission director in Laos and Cambodia, pointed out that several collaborators helped to “collect testimonies, evidence, and compile the documents to be presented to the Holy See.”
Religious practices were suspended under the repressive regime of Pol Pot that is blamed for the deaths of about two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979 as it wanted to annihilate all whom they considered traitors and counter-revolutionaries.
In his address to the gathering, Bishop Schmitthaeusler pointed out, “Today the situation is very different. The Church is new, there are about 23,000 believers and several very young congregations, mostly founded by people who have only recently accepted the Christian faith,” the bishop said.
“The Lord accompanies us, and we always look hopefully into the future,” he added.
The event also saw an exhibit of artifacts from Bishop Salas’ time, kept safe by Cambodian Catholics. They included the bishop’s pectoral cross and the cot that he used.
The golden pectoral cross was given to Bishop Salas on 14 April 1975, just three days before Pol Pot unleashed the Khmer Rouge terror in Cambodia. It has been handed down to Bishop Schmitthaeusler.
