Twilight of Our Burma Mission

Editor: As La Salettes, we have a long and proud history of missionary work around the world. In this month of September, I hope we are allowed to reflect back with pride on our laudable response to the turmoil in our Burma Mission. This marvelous letter gives us a glimpse into the challenges that faced our missionaries in those trying times.

 

In fact, on March 28, 1966, just a month after this letter was sent, the Rangoon edition of the New York Herald carried the following news:

 

“Burma’s revolutionary government has asked a large number of foreign Christian missionaries to leave the country by the end of this year, sources said today. Some 250 Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Ireland will start leaving next month. No reason for the decision was given.   The Catholics were hardest hit, the sources said, with 73 priests, 14 lay brothers and 145 nuns asked to go. Twenty Baptists, including wives and children, and three Anglicans also were involved. The Baptists begin moving out April 2. A spokesman for Catholic groups said the government request did not involve all their missionaries here. Only those who arrived in Burma since 1948 and 84 who were here prior to 1948 were asked to leave.”

 

This letter from Fr. John P. O’Reilly. M.S. (1915-1973) was written from St. Paul’s Cathedral in Prome, Burma, and expresses the true missionary attitude we have always noticed in our foreign missionaries. Their devotion to their mission is absolutely clear. (We reestablished our Burmese Mission with our return on Nov. 18, 2005.)

 

 

La Salettes in Akyab, Burma, before our departure

The La Salette Fathers came to Burma in 1937. Since then twenty-five priests volunteered for service here. Five of them have died and nine had to return because of ill health. We are still eleven priests in the mission and two native missionary brothers. 

 

A review of almost three decades of apostolic work done in Burma does not show anything very spectacular in the way of conversions or educational or social developments. Rather it is a record of efforts made and countless setbacks endured in trying to bring the image and the grace of Christ to peoples steeped in ancient Buddhist beliefs and cults, and now confused and tense with the shrill and incessant call to follow new, revolutionary and divisive standards. 

 

It is the story of plans made and then unmade to suit shifting resources of men and an ever-stiffening governmental attitude against all missionary work. Each decade had its own special problem: The war of the forties, the rebellion of the fifties and the socialist crusade of the sixties with its wholesale confiscation of Catholic schools and houses of formation. We had no hope of further recruits from the limits imposed on us while preparing our people and our future priests and religious to stand on their own when the need arises.

 

Recent picture of Mass at Cathedral in Prome

Since 1948 the paramount problem has been, of course, the difficulty of getting new missionaries. In eighteen years only six new visas have been allowed us. Three of these six Fathers had to return because of bad health. An effort was made during three years at the La Salette Seminary, Akyab, to train native vocations for the Congregation, but with the new sweeping changes in regard to schools and also

Recent picture of Mass at Cathedral in Prome

because of the loss of two missionaries within a year that work had to be stopped. Not that we were not thinking of the future but with the severe limitation of staff and the demands of our scattered flock we have to send our students to minor seminaries elsewhere in Burma, and once they matriculate, to the Major Seminary in Rangoon conducted by the Jesuit Fathers. Some of these young men have asked to join the Congregation once they have finished their studies. When that day comes they will most certainly be welcomed in our midst. In the meantime we will have time to devote ourselves to the ever-pressing needs of the apostolate.

 

We are still very much Missionaries of Our Lady Reconciler even if we spend week after week touring our distant villages to bring them the message of the Gospel, the Mass and the sacraments. In each of our posts there are regular devotions to Our Lady of La Salette and now we are trying to establish such devotions even out in the little villages. 

 

 

(from left) Frs. Kettner and Noonan

The 19th of September is just as much a feast of the people as Christmas and Easter and there is not a person in the mission who does not know the story of the transforming event that took place so long ago on a lonely Alpine upland, which is an ever-present source of strength and consolation for a weary missionary in Burma.

 

Let no one think we are planning a strategic withdrawal. We are here to stay and to forge ahead not only to new areas but to discover new approaches for the Gospel in this land of pagoda-crowned hills and memories of a gentle master who taught peace and reconciliation five hundred years before the Incarnation. 

 

Any time the Fathers get together for a discussion there is always talk of visits to new areas, of ancient customs that might possibly be adopted or adapted to fit in with Catholic ceremonies, of encouraging examples of how are people are beginning to realize that they are the People of God, the Church today.

 

Fr. Gendron ministers to his people

At the present moment we have five parishes: Akyab, Kyaukpyu and Sandoway on the Arakan coast; Prome and Thayetmyo on the banks of the Irrawaddy. Each post has its own problems and challenges. In Akyab Fathers Gendron and Blumm are trying very hard to cover an area that runs two hundred miles north to the borders of India and East Pakistan. They travel by launch and by canoe to reach each village of their many tribes: Khumis, Mros and Chaungthas, not to speak of the Settus far to the East of Akyab in the swamplands, at the mouths of the many creeks that flow off the Yomas down into the Bay of Bengal.

 

Maps of tribes within Burma

In Kyaukpyu Father Lucey, in spite of his fifty-five years, still leaves catechists and villagers panting in an effort to keep up with him as he climbs the rugged heights of the An Pass, or marches mile after dusty or muddy mile (depending on the season) to visit his people in their little fishing villages strung along the coasts of Ramree and Cheduba islands. 

 

In Sandoway Frs. Good and Perpete have been making more and more use of the Brothers of St. Francis Xavier, not to mention our own Sisters of the Missions, to instruct and help their people, along two hundred miles of coastal plain. Both in Sandoway and in Thayetmyo the Fathers still have their schools and it makes a great difference in trying to impart some Catholic training to their children. 

 

Fathers Noonan, Dressel and Rukus have been blessed with many conversions in recent years and have been able to get their people to support little village schools that are the best means of teaching catechism. There, too, is a leper asylum that with Father Rukus’ smiling and unstinting devotion has not only brought relief to so many poor sufferers but has bought home to them their own value and importance, since they are the object such constant interest and care. And surely that is one aim of the apostolate, to make people realize their own nobility in the sight of God and of their fellow human beings.

 

Here at Prome, Bishop Newman, Father Kettner and I try to keep abreast of the many demands of a large parish with over three thousand people scattered among one hundred and six villages. We have Chins, Burmese, Karens, Indians and now some Kachins among our Catholics. Our high school was taken over last April, so with only a boarding school for

Study days for Burmese La Salettes

the boys and girls we have only a limited influence, but an entirely new set of problems in public relations, to see that our children are always models of deportment under the new school authorities, without giving the impression of trying to interfere.

 

Everything we read and hear about the Church in the modern world is very interesting to us as it is so relevant to our situation. And since existentialism is the vogue today I’m sure no one will take it amiss if we find inspiration in its insistence on the here and now. 

 

We know what the Church has done in other lands, we have admired the well laid plans for her growth in other mission countries. But we have to do what we can here and now, to work while there is still day, for the night comes.