Below are stories from past issues of Columban Mission magazine. The Columban Fathers publish Columban Mission magazine eight times a year. Subscriptions are available for just $15 per year. Sign up to receive our next issue. Read more about Columban Mission magazine.
Each Monday at 7:00 p.m. in Seoul, Korea, believers come to celebrate the Eucharist in Kwang Hwa Mun Plaza in the center of Seoul. They come to the site where members of the families bereaved in Korea’s worst maritime accident continue their protest demanding justice.
My pilgrimage in – indeed conversion to – interreligious dialogue started even before I learned the phrase interreligious dialogue.
Each one of us will have our own memories of the events that touched and made an impression on us this year. We have experienced the mass movement of refugees fleeing war, poverty and violence seeking a more secure environment which they would hope to call home.
I have often been asked, “What is the biggest change you have seen since you started working pastorally with people affected by HIV and AIDS?” I have pondered this question.
From our earliest days, almost a century ago, Columban missionaries have employed people to assist us in a variety of roles to support our mission. A few did housekeeping; some maintained buildings and grounds, while others assisted with office work.
On my first visit to Nagasaki’s Atomic Bomb Museum, the obscenity of the atomic bomb left me angry and disturbed. Amidst a 3,900°C heat carried by a blast equal to 21,000 tons of TNT, 80,000 human beings were obliterated in a millisecond – yes, 80,000 lives.
Founded by Columban Fr. Bernard Wade in 1939, St. Luke’s can boast of 700 graduates, of whom 417 have worked in remote areas which are often the center of political violence. Despite all these risks, many young people continue to volunteer for this ministry.
Almost six months ago, I arrived in Yangon, Myanmar, to begin my mission assignment. During these past six months, so many things have happened to me, or have happened around me, that I haven’t always been able to understand.
Lumen Gentium emphasizes the “universal call to holiness” which applies to all the “people of God”– clergy, religious and lay people, stating that “all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love and by this holiness