I had been away from Tanzania for one month enjoying a vacation with family at home. The highlight of the vacation was presiding at the marriage ceremony for my niece. Joined by more than 200 guests, it was a great occasion for family and friends at a beautiful church and reception hall in New Jersey. It was a day filled with celebration and joy.
For many years, Maryknoll’s Father Bob McCahill has been sending an annual letter to friends in which he chronicles his experience living among the people of Bangladesh. The following is an edited version of his letter received at the completion of 2013.
Fr. James Kroeger enjoys life of Maryknoll missionary
A delegation from the Diocese of Oakland, along with people from Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, joined Maryknoll in the summer of 2013.
Father Dae Kim (김 대욱) remembers that he was called to the priesthood at, of all the places, a bowling alley in Queens, New York. That is where he definitely decided to join the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.
Father Kim was born in Busan, South Korea, as the only child of Kwan Mo Kim and Sang Soon Pak. Though his parents had been baptized into the church, religion was not a component of the family’s structure when Father Kim was a child. The family emigrated to America when he was 10 years old, and his so-called personal “epiphany” occurred during his final year of college.
Fearing that he might fail an important project that would jeopardize graduation, then-student Kim visited the university chapel to sit, think and pray.
“At the time, I was feeling empty and lost,” said Father Kim, who found peace as he continued to visit the chapel and deepen his faith.
Baptism, Teaching Lead To Maryknoll
He passed the class, graduated and decided it was time that he was baptized into the Catholic Church. After graduation, Kim landed a good-paying job in the corporate world, but again he felt lost since “all I wanted was to make money and enjoy the privileges of rich people.”
Kim decided to volunteer as a teacher’s assistant at the St. Paul Chong Ha-Sang Korean Catholic Church in Flushing, New York. While there, a Maryknoll priest who is a teacher at the church’s Sunday school program and helped prepare Kim for his baptism and confirmation, extended an invitation to a Maryknoll Vocation Discernment retreat. A couple of years later, during a night out for students and teachers at a local bowling alley, Dae Kim announced that he was ready to apply to Maryknoll.
“I have been called to go out and invite all people to eat at the great banquet of our God, especially the most vulnerable – the poor, the oppressed and voiceless,” said Father Kim. “My ordination is my radical response to living out our baptismal call to mission. Being a missioner is to continue the prophetic mission of Jesus.”
Learn more about Father Kim from Maryknoll magazine.
Father Bob McCahill, M.M. recently sent several stories from Bangladesh, where the Goshen, Indiana, native serves in mission. Father McCahill is known as the “Bicycle Disciple,” since he travels the countryside on his bike to serve the sick and the poor.
The following Christmas letter from an early Maryknoll missioner to China was submitted to Maryknoll magazine by Louise Moresco of Royal Palm Beach, Florida, who was given it in 1950 and saved it as “a reminder of all the good works our missioners do around the world.” The writer, Father Gerard A. Donovan, served in China from 1931 until he was kidnapped and murdered by bandits in late 1937. In the letter, Father Donovan refers to Father Edward A. Weis, a Maryknoll priest for more than 50 years.
Maryknoll missioners often explain that their work in mission is rewarded many times over with the hospitality, warmth, love and prayers that they receive from the people they serve. One example of this resulted in a gift of a lifetime.
“We must love before we can truly value an alien culture,” Bishop Francis Xavier Ford, M.M.
On September 14, 1912 Francis Xavier Ford started his pastoral life with Maryknoll.
Ford was the first Maryknoll seminarian. He was one of three Maryknoll priests, along with co-founder Father Thomas F. Price, who were sent on the first overseas mission for the U.S. church. They departed for China on September 8, 1918.
Ford was born on January 11, 1892 in Brooklyn, New York, to Austin and Elizabeth Ford. He was baptized with the name Francis Xavier after the great Jesuit missioner who brought Catholicism to Japan during 1594. He seemed destined for a life in mission.
Francis Xavier Ford was 20 when he learned that two U.S. priests, Father James Anthony Walsh and Father Price, were seeking students for the new foreign mission society they had formed during 1911. He applied and became the first priesthood candidate of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America that now is known as the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.
A Life Of Mission In China
Ordained only a year before his arrival in China, Father Ford and his companions quickly discovered that mission work would require all of their spiritual strengths and abilities to cultivate human relationships across cultural differences.
Ford spent his first seven years in Yeungkong. During 1925, he went to serve in mission in Kaying, and for the next 27 years his leadership was crucial to the development of Christian communities in that part of China. Pope Pius XI, during 1935, named him the first bishop of Kaying.
Bishop Ford experienced mission as more than just building structures. He understood the essence of mission as building person-to-person relationships. The one structure he did create was a seminary for the education and training of young Chinese priests.
During his work in China, Bishop Ford developed a fondness for the people and he adopted their culture. Through his homilies and mediations, Bishop Ford drew on inspirations from the liturgical year and the rhythms, or seasons, of life in China. By April 1951, the Kaying Diocese had 19 Chinese priests and 26 Chinese Sisters to serve 23,000 Catholics.
Political Pressure Mounts
The establishment of political factions and the presence of violence in China created an uneasy way of life for Maryknoll missioners. When Japan began its attacks on China, Bishop Ford’s Kaying area was bombed. The situation became more dangerous for U.S. missioners after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
During the war and subsequent civil unrest, Bishop Ford shared a hope for a unified China. He urged Maryknoll and other missioners to assume civil responsibilities and to exercise their faith by standing by their Chinese brothers and sisters. The internal conflict between the Communist and Nationalist forces in China eventually exploded with the Communist party seizing power during May 1949. At the time, it was clear that Bishop Ford and other Maryknollers were viewed as agents of American imperialism.
Chinese officials soon began closing churches and parish houses. When the Unites States entered into war with North Korea, tensions grew and Bishop Ford was prohibited from participating in activities outside of Kaying. The first Maryknoll priests and Sisters were arrested and deported during December 1950.
Shortly after that, Bishop Ford was investigated and interrogated for four months. Arrested during April 1951, he was taken to Kaying municipal court and found guilty of espionage. Bishop Ford was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in the provincial prison in Canton, China. His health declined rapidly and he died less than a year later.
Bishop Ford’s Legacy
As Maryknoll’s first seminarian, Bishop Ford, along with his companions and Maryknoll’s co-founders, established the ground work for future Maryknoll missioners and their overseas assignments. From those early days of a few missioners in China, the essence for becoming one with the people they serve now has been carried by more than 2,000 Fathers and Brothers to 45 countries. In mission for more than 100 years, Maryknoll has touched hundreds of thousands of people from all cultures, creeds and economic situations.
The simple ability to love and to value other people and cultures all began with the life and mission work of Maryknoll’s first seminarian – Bishop Francis X. Ford.
Maryknoll Father Edward Schoellmann serves in mission in the far eastern part of Tanzania’s Sinyanga Diocese.
ABOUT MARYKNOLL
We are a Catholic Society of priests and brothers based in the United States. We are dedicated to missionary work overseas in over 20 countries. Additionally, we animate Catholics in the United States to follow their own baptismal call to share God’s compassion and love with the poor, the sick, and all those in need.
OUR GENERAL COUNCIL
(Fr. Lance P. Nadeau, Fr. James M. Lynch, Fr. Timothy O. Kilkelly, Fr. Juan Montes Zúñiga)
The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers is overseen by our General Council, led by Superior General Rev. Lance P. Nadeau, M.M.
OUR FOUNDERS
(Our Co-Founders Father Price and Father Walsh)
MISSION MINISTRIES
PLACES WE SERVE
EVANGELIZATION, PARISHES, AND PROJECTS
STORIES OF MISSION
The Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Africa Region will provide tuition assistance to African clergy, male and female religious at institutes of higher education or specialized training. Read More
NAVIGATE MARYKNOLL VOCATIONS
The calling of a lifetime
