OUTWARD TOGETHER

Growing in Friendship with Cambodia and the Holy Land
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The Catholic community in Cambodia is also very small, and easily forgotten. Cambodia is emerging from years of turmoil and terror in the 1970s and 1980s: years of civil war, U.S. carpet bombing and a U.S.-backed military governmernt, the genocidal Communist regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, famine, millions of landmines, AIDS and much besides. In the late 1970s, all Cambodian priests and sisters, and many lay people, were killed. The Catholic Church came close to being wiped out altogether. Only since 1992 have Christians been allowed to worship openly. Now there are real signs of new life, signs of new birth. Cambodia is divided into three dioceses, and we are twinned with that of Battambang. Again, we are developing links between our parishes and theirs, and support them in many ways, especially in care for the sick and elderly, and education for the children. The Church in Cambodia needs our solidarity, support and prayer.

One of the main aims of these links is to enable young adults from East Anglia to share the life of Christians in other parts of the world. There are opportunities for summer breaks and gap years. To share the life of the poor and oppressed can change our lives. Such an experience may be one of the greatest blessings we can offer our young people, and they have so much to offer the Church here and overseas.

We can help both of these Catholic communities in many ways, but the most important gift we can give is our solidarity and friendship. We have at least as much to receive from our fellow Christians in the Holy Land and Cambodia as we have to give. Their faith has survived and remained strong despite all their trials and sorrows. We can be inspired and strengthened by their witness and friendship. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem appeals to Christians in England to walk with Christians in the Holy Land. I invite everyone in our diocese to walk in faith and love with the small Catholic communities in both the Holy Land and Cambodia. Over the coming years, we can reach out in welcome to each other, share our lives with each other, and grow in faith together. We will know the joy of true Christian hospitality.

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