Below are stories from past issues of Columban Mission magazine. The Columban Fathers publish Columban Mission magazine eight times a year. Subscriptions are available for just $15 per year. Sign up to receive our next issue. Read more about Columban Mission magazine.
Fifty years ago I was pastor of an "old Christian" community on Amakusa Island in the far south of Japan. By "old Christian" I mean that a Jesuit missionary, Fr. Luis Almeida, founded the parish in 1566. Then the Tokugawa daimyo government expelled or executed all missionaries.
Columban missionary Fr. Tanvir O’Hanlon invited me to work with the Columbans for the promotion of mission in our local church.
The Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians is a Sisterhood of Irish and Irish-American, Catholic Women.
I remember how I silently uttered a prayer to bless me in my desire to become a missionary when Pope John Paul II visited the Philippines in 1985. Years later when I watched a movie about Mother Theresa's life I started to feel remiss about something.
Ana Flores Huaman is a Columban lay missionary with nearly eight years of experience, and this is her story. I first knew Ana when she was accepted into the Columban lay mission sending program in Lima, Peru, in 2007.
Shwe Mya was a dignified 40-year-old mother of two children. Her oldest son had been sent to a Buddhist monastery when he was six years old because Shwe Mya was too poor to feed him. The younger daughter lived with her grandmother whose village was very far away from Myitkyina.
"What do you know about Ireland?" I asked the third grade class that was excited to have just learnt that I was from there. "St. Patrick was from there" responded a girl in the front row. "So did that mean that he was Irish?" I inquired, my tone betraying an element of doubt.
It was about three in the afternoon on a Tuesday. I was seated at my desk in the parish office chatting with a young couple who had come to ask for baptism for their newborn baby.
Now that I'm home, I realized I do not have a room to call my own. My room is the bag I carry on my back every time I move from one mission to another. Right after high school I left home to pursue a childhood dream– to become a priest.
I still have vivid memories of my first awakening in Lima, Peru, on June 24, 1971. The population all around our mission was made up of thousands of Peruvians from the highlands, who had ventured to the coastal cities looking for a better life for their children.
The Columbans are a society of missionaries, including priests and lay people, who minister to people of various cultures as a way of witnessing to the universal love of God.