Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Phnom Penh (Agenzia Fides) - The Catholic Church in Cambodia is preparing for the Jubilee Year 2025, which will be accompanied in particular by the Virgin Mary in Cambodian communities. As part of the Holy Year celebrations, the small community of Cambodian believers will also remember the Cambodian martyrs, who are celebrated as sources of inspiration and guardians of the faith. This is what emerges from the pastoral letter of Bishop Olivier Schmitthaeusler, Apostolic Vicar of Phnom Penh, which will be read tomorrow, December 1, in all the churches of the Vicariate.
The Jubilee Year, the pastoral letter states, will be opened in Cambodia on January 5, 2025 with a solemn ceremony at the Pastoral Center of the Diocese of Thmey in Phnom Penh as part of the Vicariate's Epiphany event. Now, says the vicar, "we set out as pilgrims with the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Hope, who carried Jesus, the source of all hope," to "follow Mary, the model of faith, who believed in the promise of God and agreed to carry Jesus in her heart and body." The figure of Mary will also be important during the Jubilee period "as a mediator: Mary intercedes for us before God. We can pray to her to ask for her Son's mercy for each one of us," notes the bishop. From her, every believer learns to follow Christ, because "Mary, the first disciple, follows her Son from the day of the Annunciation, through the Cross, to his Ascension." Furthermore, Mary is "a model of service and charity" for Cambodian believers on their journey of faith, even for the smallest and youngest. The pastoral letter continues: "Mary is the one who believed in the resurrection and is the first to be taken up into Heaven: from the Cross to the tomb, from the resurrection to Pentecost, Mary is there and invites us to enter into the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection of her Son." "In these times of war, of instability in the world," Bishop Schmitthaeusler concluded, "let us pray to Mary, Queen of Peace and Mother of Families, to help us in hope. In the Jubilee Year 2025 we will be pilgrims of hope. May the Heart of Jesus strengthen us in faith and give us the charity that the world so desperately needs. May God bless this beginning of Advent and lead us to a year of grace and mercy for ourselves, our country and our world.” The pilgrimage sites to be visited during the Jubilee Year in the Apostolic Vicariate of Phnom Penh include the Shrine of Divine Mercy (Church of Saints Peter and Paul), the Parish of Mary, Queen of Peace, Shrine of Our Lady of Mekong, and the Parish of St. Michael in Sihanoukville. A special role will be played by the Parish of St. Joseph, where the Memorial of the Cambodian Martyrs is located. The parish will commemorate those who sacrificed their lives for the faith in Christ and are the “seeds and fathers” of today’s Cambodian believers: they are Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas and 34 companions for whom the Cambodian Church officially opened the diocesan phase of the beatification process in 2015. They were killed or left to die between 1970 and 1977 during the persecution of the Church under the regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The 35 martyrs come from Cambodia, Vietnam and France and are priests, lay people, catechists and missionaries. (PA) (Agenzia Fides, 30/11/2024)
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