Un morceau de l’histoire catholique disparaît au Cambodge
Here's the google translate for the lazy:
The Carmelite Notre-Dame d'Espérance, which would celebrate its 100th year next year, was destroyed in September in Phnom Penh.
The Catholic Church in Kampuchea resumes forty years after the bloody Khmer Rouge.
Founded in 1919, the Carmel Notre-Dame d'Esperance in Phnom Penh will soon be replaced by an apartment-residence.
Only the white bell tower is still standing, like a lighthouse on a seashore. In August 2018, the Notre-Dame de l'Esperance carmel in Phnom Penh lived its last moments. Soon, an apartment-residence should replace it.
The Cambodian capital is experiencing a real estate outbreak and the state-owned land is well located: on Chroy Changvar peninsula, on the shores of the central Mekong. Its disappearance is almost in the order of things in a city where the old man gives his place to the new without souls.
A carmel founded in 1919
Yet, with the carmel, it is a small piece of history that disappears. It was founded in 1919 by Archbishop Jean-Claude Bouchut, Apostolic Vicar of Cambodia's Foreign Missions in Paris, after Saigon. A place called Eng, known as "Marie-Agnes," will never be able to erase his memory. In 1972, she was 18 as a novice, but her hopes for sailing were broken by the arrival of the Red Khmers in Phnom Penh in April 1975. "Sisters had to leave the country, they wanted me to go out with them , but as I was Cambodian, I could not follow her, "she says in a pessimist voice that masks the drama.
The 16 nuns were evacuated in Belgium. Eng was deported near the Thai border where she suffered forced labor and ill-treatment. "I am excited to see this church slaughtered," confides the one who put its faith in the service of the Church as a layman. At the fall of the Pol Pot regime, the Carmel was transformed into a state orphanage. A new monastery was built in 2014 by the Seoul Cemetery in Ang Snuol, about 40 kilometers away from the capital. It now hosts seven Korean sisters.
The Christian religion has never had the favors in this Khmer land
The erasure of this place of worship is symbolic of the history of the Catholic Church in the kingdom, marked with red iron by the men in black, and traced by François Ponchaud in his book The Cathedral of the Rice Field. The Christian religion has never had the favors in this Khmer land where Theravada Buddhism is the state religion, but it was tolerated.
In the eighteenth century, the persecuted Catholics in Vietnam find massive refuge in Cambodia. In 1970, the Church counted 65,000 faithful to 90% of Vietnamese. But when General Lon Nol took power the same year, he attracted the ancestral racial hatreds and orchestrated pogroms against Vietnamese: 40,000 of them fled again across the border.
A church in rags
Upon their arrival in 1975, the Red Khmers took on the symbols of imperialism; They destroy the national bank, but also the mosques and churches, like the Cathedral of Phnom Penh, a monumental building with reinforced concrete neogothic style in 1976. No more than stone, Catholic officials do not survive. to the Angkar (the Organization).
"After the Red Khmers, the Church was in shrapnel," said father Suon Kimly, vicar general of the diocese of Phnom Penh, in a French retired. The Catholic religion was officially recognized in 1990. The government then proposed to reinvest some land, but we could not keep Notre-Dame de l'Espérance because we could not afford it, maintain the site. »
Father Suon Kimly receives a modern building surrounded by palm trees in the St Peter's Church, St. Paul's, three years ago in the Nephi neighborhood of New Phnom Penh. "It's a bit sad to see the old carmel disappear, but Jesus says the most important thing is not buildings but men," he smiled.
After the Vatican Council II and during the lethal years, missionaries expressed strong desire for inculturation. Today, with 20,000 faithful, the Catholic community remains extremely minor, under competition from Protestant Churches.
If the majority of Vietnamese remain, Father Suon Kimly is interested in young Cambodians. "They are looking for something new, Buddhism is for them a custom, a habit. Catholicism is a form of commitment, "he says. Catechumens are formed for three to five years before receiving baptism. Every year, 300 to 400 people are converted, a slow rebirth but one with solid roots