The three churches have been waiting 93 years for that recognition.

They were among nine religious places of worship Thailand's Ministry of Culture officially recognised last week. Six Buddhist temples also received Government approval.

Itthiphol Khunpluem, Thailand's Minister of Culture, highlighted the recognition of churches as a move to address the need for religious harmony.

"This certification of the Catholic Church is considered a way to promote and foster religions in Thailand, to appropriate them in line with the current situation," he said.

"The move will encourage people to have places for their religious activities." Khunpluem sees these places as being available for them to "receive education and instil morals that are correct according to religious principles".

The three Catholic churches the Cultural Ministry has approved are: Saint Thomas the Apostle Church in Bangkok; Saint Monica Church in Nan Province; Saint Joseph the Worker Church in Phrae Province.

Until 1929, Thailand had recognised only 57 Catholic churches. Since then, none has been approved until last week's additional three.

In 2021, the Thai Cabinet approved a formal law to enable the approval of religious places of worship.

The decree states that a new parish can be established only if it has a permanent resident priest and a minimum of 200 parishioners who can support the parish.

Under exceptional circumstances, a diocese can request that the criteria - resident priest and the minimum number of faithful - be waived.

Thai law says the Religions Department must release a list of parishes established in this way each year and has up to two years to seek approval for them.

The Social Communication Commission of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Thailand welcomed the new decree in 2021.

The Government's recognition of the churches addresses the need of "the current situation and provides greater certainty and guarantees for the future" for the Catholic Church in the country, the Social Communication Commission said.

The Catholic Church in Thailand has two archdioceses, nine dioceses and 502 parishes. In 2019, the country had about 388,000 Catholics - about half a percent of the 69 million population.

Source

• UCA News

In a country where Catholics represent less than 1% of the population, Francis called on these modern missionaries in Thailand to give Christianity a fresh face.

"As I prepared for this meeting, I read, with some pain, that for many people Christianity is a foreign faith, a religion for foreigners. This should spur us to find ways to talk about the faith 'in dialect,' like a mother who sings lullabies to her child," the pope said.

"With that same intimacy, let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, which involves much more than making translations.

"It is about letting the Gospel be stripped of fine but foreign garb; to let it 'sing' with the native music of this land and inspire the hearts of our brothers and sisters with the same beauty that set our own hearts on fire."

"The Lord did not call us and send us forth into the world to impose obligations on people, or lay heavier burdens than those they already have, which are many, but rather to share joy, a beautiful, new and surprising horizon."

The pope recalled Pope Benedict XVI saying that the Church does not grow by proselytizing but by attraction.

"This means we are not afraid to look for new symbols and images, for that particular music which can help awaken in the Thai people the amazement that the Lord wants to give us. Let us not be afraid to continue inculturating the Gospel.

"We need to seek new ways of transmitting the word, ways that are capable of mobilizing and awakening a desire to know the Lord. Who is that man? Who are these people who follow a man who was crucified?"

He made the comments while speaking during a meeting with priests, religious, seminarians and catechists at St. Peter's Parish of Wat Roman village in Tha Kham, Bangkok, on Nov. 22.

In the course of his visit, Francis focused some of his attention on the humiliation of women and children who are forced into prostitution.

During an open-air Mass with 60,000 people at Bangkok's national sports stadium, Francis urged Thais to not ignore the women and children trafficked for sex or migrants enslaved as fishermen and beggars.

"All of them are part of our family," he told an estimated 60,000 people in the stadium for the evening service. "They are our mothers, our brothers and sisters."

This was the second time he focussed on the plight of women and children forced into the sex trade.

Earlier, during a meeting with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, he praised the Thai government's efforts to fight human trafficking.

Prayuth didn't make any reference to the problem in his remarks to Francis, though he stressed that Thailand had made great strides in promoting human rights.

"We have sought to strengthen the family institution and ensure equal opportunities for all groups in society, especially women and children," he told Francis after a brief private meeting.

Thailand is concered a key trafficking destination as well as a source of sex workers and forced labour.

The four-day visit to Thailand was packed and included meeting the Prime Minister, Government authorities, the Buddhist supreme patriarch of Thailand, medical professionals, people with disabilities, Kin Maha Vajiralongkorn, priests, religious and seminaries, the bishops of Thailand, Jesuits in Thailand, Christian leaders of other religions, Mass at the National stadium and another with young people at the Cathedral.

Sources

• la-Croix
• CNA
• APNews

In both countries, there's one Catholic for every 200 people, as opposed to roughly one for five in the United States.

The Nov. 19-26 trip will be the pontiff's fourth to Asia, following South Korea (2014), Sri Lanka and the Philippines (2015), and Bangladesh and Myanmar (2017).

Though his first priority will be to boost the small local Catholic communities, Pope Francis is bound to focus most of his 18 scheduled speeches - all in Spanish - on issues close to his heart and which heavily affect these countries.

The wide range of topics likely will include human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in Thailand's sexual tourism industry; the death penalty; corruption; and the high number of suicides among young people.

He's also expected to call for peace and nuclear disarmament, especially during stops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, and care for the environment.

Just to put some of these priorities into context:

• Sex tourism: Both girls and boys as young as ten years old are forced into prostitution in Thailand, either by local pedophiles or foreign sex tourists. Often they're forced to service five to ten clients a day, constituting what Pope Francis condemns as "modern day slavery," and a "crime against humanity." UNICEF describes child prostitution as "one of the gravest infringements of rights that children can endure."
• The death penalty: The pontiff recently changed the official compendium of Catholic teaching to reflect that capital punishment is never admissible. However, it's still allowed in Japan. The local Church has invited Iwao Hakamada, an 86-year old man who spent 48 years on death row, to meet Pope Francis. This former boxer and Catholic convert was released in 2014 when DNA analysis proved the evidence against him could have been planted.
• Suicide: According to a 2018 government report, 250 elementary and high school-age children in Japan took their own lives between 2016 and 2017 for a variety of reasons including bullying, family issues and stress. It's the top cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 39, and Japan's suicide rate is the sixth highest in the world.
• Peace: While in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world's only two cities to have experienced nuclear weapons, Francis is expected to reiterate his calls for nuclear disarmament. Though post-war Japan has a history of pacificism, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is currently attempting to revise the constitution to allow for rearmament. (The Nippon Carta Magna, article nine, states that the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right, aspiring "to an international peace based on justice and order.") Continue reading

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When he appointed Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle as head of Catholic aid agency Caritas Internationalis, the cardinal revealed that the pope had told him he wanted an Asian in the position because "the future of the Church is in Asia."

"It is not a matter of honour. Is it a challenge, a prophecy or a great calling? We do not know. But it is surely a matter of great responsibility, a great mission," the cardinal said.

And while the Church only has an estimated 120-140 million followers in North, Southeast and South Asia from about 1.2 billion worldwide, it continues to grow and Francis very clearly sees the opportunities.

The pontiff's visits to Thailand and Japan from Nov. 20-26 follow his journeys to South Korea for World Youth Day in 2014, Sri Lanka and the Philippines in early 2015 and Myanmar and Bangladesh in late 2017.

Each trip had its own unique triumphs and we can expect no less this time around, especially the Japan leg, which is heavy with both personal and thematic symbolism.

As Pope Francis prepares to embark on his fourth trip to Asia in the seventh year of his pontificate, he is delivering in a big way on the promise he made shortly after his election that he would make Asia a key focus of his papacy.

When he appointed Filipino Cardinal Luis Tagle as head of Catholic aid agency Caritas Internationalis, the cardinal revealed that the pope had told him he wanted an Asian in the position because "the future of the Church is in Asia."

"It is not a matter of honour. Is it a challenge, a prophecy or a great calling? We do not know. But it is surely a matter of great responsibility, a great mission," the cardinal said.

And while the Church only has an estimated 120-140 million followers in North, Southeast and South Asia from about 1.2 billion worldwide, it continues to grow and Francis very clearly sees the opportunities.

The pontiff's visits to Thailand and Japan from Nov. 20-26 follow his journeys to South Korea for World Youth Day in 2014, Sri Lanka and the Philippines in early 2015 and Myanmar and Bangladesh in late 2017.

Each trip had its own unique triumphs and we can expect no less this time around, especially the Japan leg, which is heavy with both personal and thematic symbolism.

And on Sept. 22, 2018, the Vatican also inked a still-secret and controversial deal on the appointment of bishops with China. Movement on the provisional agreement has proved extremely slow on the Chinese side amid an escalation of Beijing's crackdown on religion, which is focused particularly on so-called "underground" Catholic and Protestant churches, whose followers number 60-100 million, as well as China's 22 million Muslims. It has also targeted young people.

It was in Seoul, during World Youth Day in August 2014, that it was clear Francis, only 17 months into his pontificate, was already a hugely popular pope, feted as something of a religious rock star by Catholic youth excited by the change from the deeply traditional and conservative papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

The importance of youth of saving the planet and creating a more modern Church for future generations has been a constant theme of Francis' papacy.

This is unlikely to stop as on most of his overseas visits he holds a special Mass for young people.

This will happen in Bangkok, while he will meet young Christians and non-Christians at St. Mary's Cathedral in Tokyo.

It was also en route to Seoul in August that Francis sent a telegram to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who had been elevated to secretary-general of the ruling Communist Party, about restarting talks with Beijing that had been dormant for almost a decade.

Francis' voyage to Thailand is the first by a pope since St. John Paul II visited in 1984.

His trip to Japan is the first by a pontiff since St. John Paul II visited in 1981 and represents the end of a long personal journey.

As a young priest, Francis had been determined to travel to Asia as a missionary. With his first choice of China unavailable because of the closing of the country to foreign missionaries and Catholic priests by the Communist Party, Japan became Francis' destination of choice.

"Over time, I felt the desire to go as a missionary to Japan, where the Jesuits have always carried out very important work," he wrote as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in his 2019 book El Jesuita. Bergoglio was diagnosed with a heart ailment and deemed physically unsuitable for missionary life, but it is something he has carried with him all his life.

Mission and evangelization

On overseas trips, particularly on visits to Asia, Francis often speaks about the importance of mission and evangelization.

Francis' travel schedule in Asia already compares favourably with that of the great travelling pope, St. John Paul II, despite his relative age as an octogenarian compared with the saint's youth at the start of his long pontificate.

Indeed, in visiting Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Francis made history with the first-ever papal visits to these countries.

The only Asian nations where St. John Paul II ventured that Francis has not yet visited are Timor-Leste, still at the time part of Indonesia when the Polish pope made a deeply historic visit in 1989, and India, where he undertook a substantial 10-day journey from north to south in 1986 and again to Delhi in 1999.

India is very much on Francis' wish list, something he has made very public, and the recalcitrance of the Indian government remains a sore point with the Vatican, especially since St. Teresa of Kolkata was canonized by Francis in 2016.

The Holy See failed last time, in 2017, to get the permission of the increasingly Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi, a knockback from which Myanmar reaped the benefits.

Now comfortably elected for a second term, Modi may find the temptation to have multiple photo opportunities with Pope Francis too hard to resist and see it as a way, perhaps, of deflecting his mounting programs of religious repression.

This is being writ large in Jammu and Kashmir, the disputed Muslim-majority state that in August had its autonomy revoked, sparking outcry across the globe.

But while India remains a disappointment to be resolved, we should note the successes of Francis' Asian visits.

He opened communications after many years of silence with Beijing — followed by a deal, however limited and initial — celebrated Sri Lanka's first saint, and made a triumphant visit to Asia's Catholic heartland of the Philippines, comforting victims of Typhoon Yolanda and pulling focus on the 2015 Year of the Poor.

In Myanmar and Bangladesh in late 2017, he played a delicate piece of two-step diplomacy, soft-pedaling in public over the then raw Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, where at both official and ground levels the actions of the army forced the troubled Muslim ethnic minority into Bangladesh.

But privately he is understood to have been far tougher with civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her military counterpart Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

He then triumphantly staged an ecumenical service in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, welcoming Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists on stage for prayers.

They included representatives from the Rohingya people, instantly silencing critics of his gently prodding stance in Myanmar.

In this way he shone an international spotlight on the crisis of up to one million refugees being forced from their homeland by a brutal military and a racist, increasingly religiously intolerant regime.

On the Japan leg of his forthcoming trip, he has similar opportunities for subtle but clear diplomatic messages — and who would bet against him taking them?

The Vatican's deal with China and the ongoing repression of Christians by North Korea's murderous regime will be lurking.

If he is trying to balance China's glacial progress on his bishop deal and its assault on worship of all religions by his mere presence in Japan — China's hated neighbour — he will already have hit the mark on the day the tour was announced.

It is not drawing too long a bow to see his appearances in Japan, where a stadium Mass in Nagasaki is already fully booked, as a test. Any Chinese reaction will give him a clue to where he really stands with Xi Jinping.

At a guess, Francis will, for sure, give the Chinese some face, wave hello at least and talk up his deal while he is being treated as a rock star and pressing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's flesh, surrounded by only one version of the church loyal only to Rome.

He will only be helped by the infectious enthusiasm of Japanese crowds who have shown, with the recent wildly successful Rugby World Cup, just how keen they are to embrace the new.

The Chinese, to put it mildly, will be put on the spot.

This is the first in a series of commentaries on Pope Francis' apostolic visit to Thailand and Japan and the issues around the journey.

• Michael Sainsbury is a journalist and photographer. He was commissioned by UCAN to write a series of comment pieces ahead of the Pope's visit to Asia.
• First published by UCANews.org. Republished with permission.

But the comparison appears to end right there — at least with reference to Thailand. The pope's trip to Japan has a point and it doesn't get much bigger than global peace.

Yet his visit to Thailand does not appear to have a point at all beyond some motherhood blandishments, and that is a big missed opportunity for the Vatican. The Holy See appears to be uncharacteristically dropping the ball on the Thai visit, but maybe for reasons that are beyond its control.

The message from the Vatican is as standard as it can get: "Christ's Disciples, Missionary Disciples." It's the 350th anniversary of the Vatican's mission to Thailand (formerly Siam) but most of the visit is stuffed with meetings with dignitaries, bishops and priests and the standard stadium Mass, a Mass for young people and a hospital visit. But that is it.

Like St. John Paul II, Pope Francis' trip to Japan has a singular and laser-focused point — peace and the end of war, which has tortured mankind since antiquity.

Pope Francis follows his predecessor to Nagasaki, where he will hold a Mass, and to Hiroshima, where he will hold a prayer service for peace. Like the saintly pontiff, Pope Francis will visit the shrines of 26 martyrs, heady stuff compared to Thailand, a last-minute add-on that has even bewildered some in Rome.

The Japan visit gains even more poignancy because it will take place in the shadow of nuclear-armed Russia, China and North Korea. And at a time when the United States has withdrawn from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty that bans land-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

Russia remains in dispute with Japan over Kuril island and the two have a 200-kilometre maritime border. This will add huge weight to Pope Francis' visits to the nuclear-bombed cities of Japan and to the meetings with survivors and their families. In recent months, North Korea has seemed the most likely of those three nations to actually use a weapon if rhetoric is anything to go by. At the time of St. John Paul II's visit, the Cold War and its nuclear arms race were still raging. We do not learn, it seems, from even our very recent history.

Pope Francis' Thai schedule is disappointing. Many local clergy and lay Catholics lay the blame at the feet of Thailand's Cardinal Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovitvanit, who reportedly is not especially popular among his own clergy or the substantial number or foreign clergy in Bangkok.

Thailand is the regional hub for Catholic charity Caritas International and the Jesuit Refugee Service — these religious are peeved at being left out of proceedings. The only exception regarding the religious are the Jesuits, the pope's own order with whom he spends time on each international visit.

Indeed, the closest Pope Francis will come in Thailand, even vaguely, to the poor and dispossessed will be in the constrained environment of a Catholic hospital for the disabled.

Local Catholics are wondering why there is not a meeting with refugees, or a visit to a refugee camp, perhaps at Mae Sot or other refugee camps on the Myanmar-Thai border. After all, John Paul II spoke to refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in a camp south of Bangkok for several hours.

Refugees close to pope's heart

Thailand is the Southeast Asian epicentre for refugees, and there are hundreds of thousands of both registered and unregistered refugees in the country. The Catholic Church, led by the Jesuit Refugee Service, which has its Asian headquarters in Bangkok despite the country's tiny Catholic minority, has done long-term and consistent work helping these people.

It is arguable there is no issue closer to Pope Francis' heart than refugees. He has been a tireless advocate and supporter of dispossessed people. As he celebrated Mass in St. Peter's Square on the 105th World Day of Migrants and Refugees on Sept. 29, once again he denounced "the globalization of indifference" and said "a painful truth" is that "our world is daily more and more elitist, more cruel towards the excluded." The same might be said, about this trip, of the Thai Church.

Francis continued: "As Christians, we cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of old and new forms of poverty, to the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to our group," adding that "we cannot remain insensitive, our hearts deadened, before the misery of so many innocent people. We must not fail to weep. We must not fail to respond."

The plight of Pakistani Catholic refugees has been well documented in coverage that has been led by this very publication. This week we revealed that Pakistani Catholics in Bangkok are too afraid to attend the papal Masses. The Thai Church could help facilitate this, but it seems it is unwilling or perhaps fearful of upsetting the government with which it has cosy elitist ties at senior levels.

There are other issues very close to the pope's heart and mission that could be raised in Thailand and brought to life for a global audience in much the same way he did with the Rohingya crisis during his 2017 trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh.

There are the slave fishermen drawn from Burmese, Cambodia and Lao economic refugees who also work in often dangerous and underpaid construction jobs. He could remind the world of the Rohingya crisis ongoing over the border in Myanmar, and there are plenty of Rohingya refugees in Thailand along with scores who have perished in people-smuggling camps.

Then there is the sectarian conflict in the south between the Thai military and Muslim separatists that has claimed tens of thousands of lives — a conflict that fits in with the message of peace Francis will take to Japan.

Pope Francis could bookend his trip with a visit to the excellent Hellfire Pass Burma Railway Museum, another look at the Japanese war experience that would help him better understand what life was like as a prisoner of the Japanese, and how their notorious brutality was probably one of the reasons the Americans dropped nuclear bombs instead of sacrificing more of their own.

In doing so, he could highlight the stunning forgiveness that has come from Australian, British, New Zealand and Asian civilians.

Each one of these is a singular and powerful missed opportunity.

The soft schedule in Thailand could change, of course — and this is where Francis could work his special magic.

Indeed, ucanews understands that questions are already being asked in Rome.

This pope has a habit of getting personally involved in his international travel; he sidestepped normal diplomatic channels to get to Myanmar and has a habit of making even the most apparently anodyne situations suddenly work so well for him, exemplified by his visit to the Mexico-US border. Celebrating Mass in Ciudad Juarez, he offered a stinging critique of leaders on both sides of the border, saying that the "forced migration" of thousands of Central Americans is a "human tragedy" and "humanitarian crisis."

So maybe Thailand should prepare for a surprise.

• Michael Sainsbury is a journalist and photographer. He was commissioned by UCAN to write a series of comment pieces ahead of the Pope's visit to Asia.
• First published by UCANews.org. Republished with permission.

The three sources said the trip would be announced soon.

The late Pope John Paul visited Japan in 1981 and Thailand in 1984.

Francis' trip to Japan, which he announced himself in January, will take him to Tokyo as well as the two cities hit by U.S. atomic bombs at the end of World War Two - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Read more

Like the hundreds of thousands of his fellow Cambodians who migrate in search of work each year, he had a simple but powerful motivation: "I heard there were better jobs in Thailand and I knew bahts were worth more than riels, so I decided to go."

It was a decision that nearly cost him his life. After chatting with others in his village who had made the journey before him, San waited at the border for two days. When night fell on the second day, he crossed the border into Thailand and then waited another day on the other side. Eventually, a group of men appeared in a large pick-up.

"They used their mobile phones as torches to see which of us looked strong, then they laid us next to each other and on top of each other in the back of the pick-up," says San.

"There were three layers of us, with the strongest at the bottom. There were about 20 of us in the back and they put a plastic sheet over us and told us not to make any noise."

Eight suffocating hours later, the pick-up stopped in a forest and San and five other Cambodians were herded into a cage and "locked in so that the police wouldn't find us". Behind bars in an unknown forest in a strange land, the negotiations began. San and the others were offered $200 (£132) a month - far more than they would make at home - to work on construction sites in Bangkok.

They accepted, only to discover that they would have to pay their captors-cum-employers $80 for transporting them to the Thai capital, $80 for the correct documents, and $30 a month for basics such as mosquito nets. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian. The article is by Sam Jones, a Guardian reporter currently on a secondment on Global development.
• Image: YouTube

In June 2007, my Mother asked me to study in Ranong. The head teacher of Soi-jet Learning Center sent me to join English class at Ranongthani Learning Center which Marist Asia FoundaNon
provided.

In 2008, I studied at Marist Asia Foundation. In that year my mother asked me to work but I do not want to work. I said to my mother that I am too young to work and I want to study more.

She asked me to choose between education and Mother. She gave me two choices to choose. If I study, she will not allow me to call her Mother. I am allowed to call her Mother if I work. I did not know what to choose but I went to school as usual.

One day my Mother told me that I am giving more importance to an education than the Mother. At
that moment I did not know what should I say. Should I need to say sorry to her or not? Then I immediately told my Mother please let me study, I will not ask for pocket money, I will not ask for new uniforms or stationeries. I told her that I will help myself.

One day my parents separated and my Mother go away from home. We all have to live with our
Father. From that day I have to take care of my sister and my brother.

My sister and I have to work on weekends and take care of the house. Even though I live with my father, I go to school everyday. I keep in my mind that only education can change my life in the future.

After I finished year 4, Teacher Irene from Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) offered me a job to teach at Bangklang Learning Center.

My first day of work was great because I joined Ngao Learning Center's parents' meeting and I started to learn more about migrant families. Now I am a teacher as I wish and helping my own people in Ranong.

• Thu Thu Mon is a Burmese Migrant in Ranong on the Thailand / Burma Border. As well as teaching, she is a student in the ACU University Online Diploma Programme.
• www.maristasiafoundation.org

So profitable is the trade in slaves that some local fishermen in Thailand have been converting their boats to carry Rohingya migrants instead of fish.

A Guardian investigation into Thailand's export-orientated seafood business and the vast transnational trafficking syndicates that had, until recently, been holding thousands of Rohingya migrants captive in jungle camps, has exposed strong and lucrative links between the two.

Testimony from survivors, brokers and human rights groups indicate that hundreds of Rohingya men were sold from the network of trafficking camps recently discovered in southern Thailand.

According to those sold from the camps on to the boats, this was frequently done with the knowledge and complicity of some Thai state officials.

In some cases, Rohingya migrants held in immigration detention centres in Thailand were taken by staff to brokers and then sold on to Thai fishing boats.

Other Rohingya migrants say Thai officials collected them from human traffickers when they arrived on the country's shores and transported them to jungle camps where they were held to ransom or sold to fishing boats as slave labour.

Thailand's seafood industry is worth an estimated $7.3bn a year. The vast majority of its produce is exported.

Last year, another Guardian investigation tracked the supply chain of prawns produced with slave labour to British and American supermarket chains.

Though the Guardian has not irrefutably linked individual Thai ships using Rohingya slaves to specific seafood supermarket produce, the likelihood is that some seafood produced using this labour will have ended up on western shelves.

The scale of the profitable and sophisticated human trafficking networks making money from the desperation of hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya "boat people" has been emerging over the past weeks. Continue reading

Sources

• Emanuel Stoakes is a freelance journalist and researcher in the field of human rights and conflict; Chris Kelly is a documentary filmmaker and photographer; Annie Kelly writes on global development, human rights and social affairs for the Guardian and Observer. This article is from The Guardian
• Image: BBC News
• See also: Thai fishing industry turns to trafficking video, and 'Murder at Sea: Captured on Video but Murderers Go Free' in The New York Times

I've never felt happier.

Restless. Yes, that perhaps sums up in a word a spirit led journey.

I turned 40 a year ago and realised each year I was becoming a bit more a comfortable.

Although a little dramatic, one image in my mind was that of putting slippers on and watching a bit more TV.

With about 25 years to go before retirement, do I choose to slow down or go deeper?

Answer a more radical calling in my bones that I could not turn off.

I knew deep down becoming more comfortable was going in the reverse direction to a God placed desire in me.

Who do you really want to be?

I can still remember a significant moment when I was 16. I was asked by a priest during a spiritual conversation: Frank, what is your deepest desire? Who do you really want to be?

My response was pondered often while walking my Doberman dog along the riverbank - (she insisted on large amounts of daily exercise or she would bark the neighbourhood down) - I wish to live a life of love and service for others.

And hence the journey began to Marist life and Priesthood.

While in New Zealand I greatly enjoyed serving in schools, parishes and among the indigenous Maori people.

But working among poor Burmese Migrants in the fishing town of Ranong for the past 18 months has changed me inside.

What it is like serving in Asia

It's a bit like Jesus in the gospel of John taking off his ‘priestly garments' and picking up a ‘towel and water basin' to wash dirty feet; moving from the ordered priestly workbench of the altar to more dirty missionary pathways and streets.

I've been serving on the Thailand Burma Border for the past 18 months and I've never been happier. Continue reading

Sources

• Fr Frank Bird s.m. in Restless Press
• Image: Marist Asia Foundation

A draft bill — which would see those caught profiting from surrogacy punished with up to ten years in prison — passed its first reading in the country's military-stacked parliament on Thursday, legislators said Friday.

"We want to put an end to this idea in foreigners' minds that Thailand is a baby factory," said lawmaker Wallop Tungkananurak.

"The bill was adopted with overwhelming support," he added.

A copy of the bill seen by AFP also forbids "any middlemen or agencies... receiving any assets or benefits" through the surrogacy process.

Under its current wording it is unlikely foreigners will be able to use Thailand as a surrogacy destination with the same ease they once enjoyed.

The murky industry came under intense scrutiny this summer after a series of surrogacy scandals broke involving foreigners, prompting the promise of a crack down by Thailand's military junta, which took power in a May coup. Continue reading

Dozens — possibly hundreds — of foreign couples are thought to now be in limbo after entering into surrogacy arrangements through clinics in the kingdom.

Demure Miss Tangmo (Watermelon) tries to be as good and loving as any mum on the planet, but she's only eight, and she worries a lot about her five-year-old brother and the twins. Not that there's really much to worry about there: he's happy and the twins are jolly three-year-old eating machines. Her mum, back in rehab? That's a worry, but it's nothing new.

Like the time the police arrested mum again after she'd been sick and violent on meth and was coming down, on domicum mixed with methadone. Minutes before the police arrived, Tangmo (she prefers to becalled Daeng) had grabbed her younger brother and the twins and ran to the safety of a rickety bamboo-shack karaoke bar under the expressway. She woke up the old man who's always asleep at the door to let them in to hide from mum. It wasn't the first time. She knew the mamasan lady who arrives in the late afternoon would buy them noodles, if she was in a good mood. But they couldn't stay there overnight; the police would think bad things and put the mamasan in jail.

Whenever Daeng runs away, those two scavenger slum dogs who protect her come running — she fed them once and they are loyal for life. They curl up together for warmth all night — all four kids sleep soundly and safe with those two scavenger dogs.

What about hunger? In the morning, there was this nice crippled lady a few shacks away by the railway tracks who hobbles to the temple each morning, seeking left-overs and whatever the monks give to her and other indigents. She always saved a bit of rice for Daeng, brother, the twins — and the two dogs. In the afternoon, it's hit and miss. Continue reading

Sources

• Bangkok Post
• Image: AsiaNews

As many as 2,000 children are experiencing stunted growth and nearly 1,000 are acutely malnourished, said Andrew Scadding, director of the Thai Children's Trust, during an interview with Hanna Hindstrom from the Democratic Voice of Burma.

The UK-based NGO has provided food aid through local schools since 2010, but their money is running out. Global aid budgets are down and donors are redirecting much of their remaining funds into Burma's emerging market. Continue reading

New Zealand-born Fr Larsen served in the Philippines for many years before leading a Marist mission in to Burma (Myanmar). After being denied an entry visa to Burma, Fr Larsen ministered to refugees and migrant workers on the Thai-Burma border.

For the past 25 years, Fr John Larsen has been working in Southeast Asia, the last six of which he spent on the Thai-Burma Border assisting migrant workers and their families.

"The greatest need is to work for justice, particularly for the young people," said Fr Larsen.

Now in its third year, the Future Justice Prize is a joint initiative of Future Leaders and ACU's Institute of Legal Studies. The prize is awarded to Australian individuals and organisations for leadership and initiative in the advancement of future justice.

Source

• ACU