Pime Missionaries
  • Home
  • What Makes Us Different
    • PIME 75 Years in the US
    • The Missionary Vocation
    • Our US Missionaries
    • PIME Martyrs
    • PIME Saints & Causes
  • Get Involved
    • Sponsorships at A Distance
    • Mission Development Projects
    • Events
    • Mission Store
    • Prayer Intentions
  • Our Impact
    • Our Missions
    • Mission World Online
    • PIME Asia News
  • |
  • DONATE
  • Home
  • What Makes Us Different
    • PIME 75 Years in the US
    • The Missionary Vocation
    • Our US Missionaries
    • PIME Martyrs
    • PIME Saints & Causes
  • Get Involved
    • Sponsorships at A Distance
    • Mission Development Projects
    • Events
    • Mission Store
    • Prayer Intentions
  • Our Impact
    • Our Missions
    • Mission World Online
    • PIME Asia News
  • |
  • DONATE
August 5, 2021  |  By pime_admin In Asia, AsiaNews, Cambodia, Catholic, Catholic Church, Catholicism, Fathers, First Missionaries, Human Rights, Italian Missionaries, MondoeMissione, Phnom Penh, PIME, PIME Mission Insight, PIME Priest

Fr. Vendramin, the first PIME Missionary in Phnom Penh after Pol Pot

Fr. Vendramin, late PIME Missionary in Cambodia
Fr. Vendramin, late PIME Missionary in Cambodia

By AsiaNews

In 1990, Mother Teresa’s nuns asked him to stay with them to celebrate Mass. The PIME Missionary, as soon as he arrived he wrote, “The whole of Cambodia has been reduced to a forced labor camp.” For 30 years, he accompanied the rebirth of the small local Church.

The Catholic Church of Cambodia mourns its pioneer after the years of Pol Pot. Fr. Toni Vendramin, an Italian PIME Missionary, who died last month at the age of 78. In 1990, he was the first priest to return to the country after years of terror [from the Cambodian Genocide]. He had been hospitalized for several weeks at the Royal Phnom Penh Hospital for bacterial pneumonia.

A native of the province of Treviso, and a priest since 1969, Fr. Vendramin had been a missionary in Bangladesh for 15 years before leaving for Cambodia just as the Khmer Rouge government was showing the first signs of opening up. “The Sisters of Mother Teresa,” he recalled last year in an interview with Mondo e Missione, “had been invited by the government. They wanted to return permanently but were looking for a priest to accompany them. They had met a French missionary, Fr. Emile Destombes (the future vicar apostolic of Phnom Penh, who died in 2016, ed.) who was there for two or three months on a cooperator’s visa. Like him, there was another Maryknoll missionary, Fr. Tom Dunleavy; there were no other priests. The sisters were telling the government, ‘we will go back to Cambodia, but we want a guarantee that we will have a priest with us to say Mass.’”

On November 23, 1990, along with four religious sisters from the Missionaries of Charity, Fr. Vendramin boarded a flight from Hong Kong to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. “We arrived without a visa, but with a letter of invitation from Prime Minister Hun Sen; at the airport, they did not know what to do,” Fr. Toni recounted. “All of Cambodia was reduced to a forced labor camp and exterminated its own people, in the name of an aberrant and criminal ideology,” the priest wrote a few days later in a letter addressed to friends.

The Cambodian government wanted the Missionaries of Charity to open a home for those mutilated by landmines, but the sisters did not feel up to it. So, they began to collect the sick or beggars who slept in the streets, and then they took care of abandoned children or those suffering from AIDS. “Of churches there were none, we found ourselves in private homes to celebrate Mass,” Fr. Vendramin still recalled. “At the end of 1990, we managed to get back the dormitory of the minor seminary; it was there that we celebrated the first Christmas, it was a very moving experience.” However, it was an activity still marked by many restrictions. “I could not move beyond a radius of 13 miles from Phnom Penh,” the missionary explained. “It was only with the arrival of the United Nations, for the 1993 elections, that freedom of movement improved and it was also possible to begin reorganizing the Church.”

In recent years, Fr. Vendramin had led St. Peter’s parish in the area of the airport. As long as the government allowed it, once a month he also went to the prison to visit inmates. “Coming here,” he said last year, taking stock of his 30 years in Cambodia, “was a very profound experience for me. Everything has changed in Phnom Penh; where there were only two or three paved roads today there are 40-story skyscrapers built by the Chinese. But the wounds of the past remain, more or less open or hidden. As for the Catholic presence, in all missions today there is a kindergarten, sometimes an elementary school. Along with basic facilities, homes for the disabled, other social initiatives both at the diocesan and national level. The city has grown, but this little Church of ours is also growing in small steps.”

 

PIME PIME Missionary PIME Priests The Mission
Previous StoryFrom the World, For the World

Related Articles

  • IMG_3044-e1623310418437
    From the World, For the World
  • Fr Nelson Blog Pic
    PIME Mourns Fr. Nelson

Archives

  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • January 2021
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • September 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • April 2016
  • December 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013

Categories

Tags

Banglades Bangladesh Bishop Vijay Rayarala Brazil Coronavirus COVID-19 COVID-19 Relief Dhaka Education Fr. Ace Valdez Fr. Gian Paolo Gualzetti Fr. Simone Caelli Hill Tribes India Mission in India Mission Work New Missionaries PIME PIME in India PIME Missionary PIME Priests Social Justice Sponsorships Sponsorships at a Distance Thailand The Mission The Philippines Witness You Make a Difference

About

Sed molestie augue sit amet leo consequat posuere. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Proin vel ante a orci tempus eleifend ut et magna.

 

WHO WE ARE

  • What Makes Us Different

WHAT WE DO

  • Our Impact
  • Get Involved
  • DONATE

ABOUT US

The PIME Missionaries are Catholic priests and brothers who care for and develop communities in 19 countries around the world.

FIND US ELSEWHERE

en_USEnglish
en_USEnglish