[sub_title color="#00b0b9"] Railaco, Timor-Leste Project Update at One Paddock Winery, 28 March 2021 [break height="10"][/sub_title]A splendid day was enjoyed at One Paddock Currency Creek Winery on Sunday 28 March by forty Pilgrims 100 members. We especially thank Rachel and Tim Henderson for so generously hosting this special event at One Paddock.[break height=10]
We were treated to three very informative presentations: [break height=10]Fr Peter Hosking SJ recounted certain events of his time in Timor-Leste during the Indonesian withdrawal. His personal account was very moving and we can only imagine how traumatic it was at the time. [break height=10]Helen Forde, CEO of Jesuit Mission, explained the stewardship of the $71,000 collectively contributed by all Pilgrims 100 members for the Railaco project in Timor-Leste. A document summarizing Helen’s presentation can be found here. [break height=10] Finally, we watched a video specially prepared for Pilgrims 100 members by the Jesuit video production unit in Timor-Leste about the Railaco project, sharing their hopes for 2021 and expressing gratitude for our support. The video can be viewed here.
‘The roar of a nation,’ hope stirs the next generation of Myanmar
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This is
one of the most challenging historical moments for our Jesuit partners and those
people they serve in Myanmar, after the military seized power over the democratically
elected government in a shocking coup on 1 February. More than 700
people have since been killed by security forces, the majority of
whom were peacefully protesting for a return to democracy and the release of
political leaders.
However, hope has been reignited in the next generation of students
from the Jesuit Mission supported Myanmar Leadership Institute (MLI), which
celebrated its second graduation ceremony on 19 March amidst the COVID-19
pandemic and the military coup.
Twenty-two students from the second
cohort received a diploma and certificate in Leadership Development in
collaboration with the Ateneo de Manila University and six students received
the professional certificate in Peace Leader Studies from Jesuit Worldwide
Learning.
[quotes]“Leadership is not about position, it is a way of life, understanding the value of human dignity. It is completely service oriented. I would like to thank the teachers of MLI for the knowledge you passed on to us and for helping us grow in every way possible." [/quotes]
[quotes_author color="#000"]Graduating MLI student [/quotes_author]
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Since its inception in 2018, MLI has been forming a generation of
leaders that prioritise social justice, to lead with competence and compassion.
Its courses range from a one-year Diploma in Leadership program to a ten-week
Certificate in Business Communication program.
Many of the students of MLI come from ethnic minority groups and
are now more determined than ever to overcome decades of conflict that has
stunted the educational, social and infrastructural development of the nation.
[quotes]“We now live amid the roar of a nation. Books will be written about this Burmese Spring Revolution…. But it is into such a world as ours at this turning point of Myanmar’s history, that great ideas come as gently as doves, the gentle stirring of life and hope. That is the reason for your study. That is the reason for studying leadership, for trying to understand its constituent elements: such as empathy, resilience, collaboration, trust, respect, courage, creativity, forethought and the techniques of planning, management and networking. Hope is rooted in the past, but believes in the future.” [/quotes]
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[quotes_author color="#000"] The Mission Superior [/quotes_author]
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During the graduation ceremony a moment of silent prayer was offered to honour those who have lost their lives since 1 February.
Please keep the people of Myanmar in your thoughts and prayers.
Praying in a foreign language: Fr Phil Crotty SJ (1932-2021)
It was the spirit of adventure that led the late Fr Phil Crotty SJ, previous Director of Jesuit Mission and Hazaribag missionary, to India in 1952 and the spirit of devotion that kept him there for 50 years.Written by Catherine Marshall.
Fr Phil Crotty SJ in Kurseong, India 1964
When Fr Phil Crotty SJ was a boy growing up in regional
Victoria, he couldn’t have known he’d spend his final years praying in a
foreign language. It was a lifetime of service, commitment and good old adventure
that had brought him to this point – and which had, in the end, carried him
full circle. Reflecting on 71 years as a Jesuit, the boy from Ararat, Victoria said
he’d joined the Society of Jesus in 1950, at the age of 18, on the assumption
he’d be sent off into the world just as soon as the Australian province had
found a suitable placement for him.
“At that stage they didn't have a mission, but the impression I was given was that ‘as soon they get a mission you can be sent on that, otherwise we'll send you to another province,” he recalled all those decades later.
"So I didn’t know when or where, but it turned out that in 1951 the Australian province was given a mission in India. And that was to become the Hazaribag Mission."
The enterprise – which ultimately became Hazaribag Province
– had arisen from a request by the Belgian Jesuits for assistance at their mission
at Ranchi, established in the late 19th century and so successful they
now required additional manpower to manage it. The Australian Province, which
was scouting around for its own mission, heeded the call, and the first six
Australian Jesuits arrived in India in 1951.
When the then-20-year-old Phil followed a year later in
December 1952, along with seven other Jesuits, he was embarking on a remarkable
journey, one that would deliver the adventure he craved and immerse him in what
he would later describe as an “extraordinary revolution”. Until then, the
furthest he’d ventured from his home state was Sydney.
I guess it was adventure in those days – not many people went overseas. It wasn’t long after the war, and Australia was pretty conservative about foreign travel and all that sort of thing."
“We went to, I think it was Myer’s, on Bourke Street in Melbourne, and were given six khaki shirts and six khaki pairs of pants. And that was about the sum total of preparation.”
With the benefit of a lifetime’s worth of retrospection, Fr
Phil later ruminated on the courage and commitment required of not only those
early Jesuit missionaries – most young scholastics in their twenties – but also
their families.
Fr Phil saying goodbye to his mother in 1952.
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“In those days we went for life. There was no coming back, you know,” he said.
"It was taken for granted that you didn't see family again, unless they came to India, which they did. But I was probably too young, too excited to really to grasp how painful it was for my mother. And in retrospect, I guess, painful for me. But that sort of feeling comes later, I think."
Decades later, Fr Phil was able to effortlessly conjure the overwhelming scene that met him when he stepped off the ship in Bombay on Christmas day, 1952.
"The crowds, the huge mass of people everywhere, which is, for me, still the most striking difference between India and Australia. Whenever I paid visits to Australia from India, it always seemed to be empty."
But even if disembodiment and homesickness had struck Phil upon
his arrival in India, there would have been little time to wallow in it. The newcomers
immersed themselves immediately in the region’s languages and cultures, familiarised
themselves with local communities – including tribal people dispossessed of
their land – and spent time discerning their own missioned theology. After a
few years of collaborative work at Ranchi, the Belgian Jesuits offered their
Australian counterparts the northern part of the mission, where they had been
least engaged. And so Hazaribag was born – and the Australians in India began
to forge their own enduring legacy.
“We had a year of Hindi, and then we were sent out to parishes that were out in the villages.”
“I was sent to a lovely place called Tongo where I spent six months practicing Hindi with the children in the school, teaching some classes and joining the boarders when they went fishing. That was a wonderful time.”
Meanwhile, the young Jesuit’s formation was progressing: he spent
time in Pune studying philosophy, taught in schools and at the university
college in Ranchi for several years, and completed his theology studies in Kurseong
near Darjeeling. He was due to fly from Kurseong to Calcutta in March 1964 to
meet his mother, who had travelled to India for his ordination; it would be
their first reunion since Fr Phil’s departure from Australia 12 years earlier. But
the plane never arrived.
“So to get to the ordination, which was to take place in Hazaribag, I climbed through the window of a train [he had bought a ticket, but it was customary for doors to be locked once the carriage was full] and travelled on the luggage rack all night. And then I got off at a place called Barauni, and travelled all day on a bus, and arrived [in Hazaribag] the evening before the ordination,” he recalled.
“I was covered in dirt from all the roads at this stage, so my plan was to sneak into the house, have a shower, and then go and meet my mother. The first person I met… as I went into the house was my mother, and the first words she said to me were, ‘Typical of you, you’re late!’"
Fr Phil remembered that reunion and the ordination that
followed as “wonderful”. But inter-religious tensions were brewing, and during his
mother’s visit Belgian Jesuit Herman Rasschaert was stoned to death in Ranchi
while trying to protect a group of Muslims from rioting Hindus.
“After my first mass I was actually in Ranchi with my mother, and the news came through that he'd been killed. Immediately there was a lockdown and curfew,” Fr Phil recalled.
“I had to get my mother back to Hazaribag in the middle of this thing. I can remember that was a very nervous journey. I had to get a taxi and the driver said, ‘I'll take you on condition that we stop nowhere’. She was very cool during the whole thing... but they were forced to cut short their stay in India. My two brothers who were also with her, they decided it would be safer to take her back [home] not long after that.”
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The danger of such interreligious mistrust was a familiar concern for the Jesuits. Though they’d been made to feel welcome upon their arrival in 1951, they understood such sentiment hinged on their willingness to develop a deep knowledge and respect for local customs and beliefs.
“If you're working with tribal people, you must understand their culture, their language, their recent history.”
“People nowadays are so relaxed about other religions, which is a huge change from what it was like when I became a Jesuit – [non-Christians] were people who had to be converted because their religion was wrong, you had to save them, save souls. It’s been an extraordinary revolution, really –it’s like being part of a revolution. It’s made [Jesuits] more human. It’s not me to you, it’s us. It’s not that I’m giving you something, but we’re sharing something together. [But] it takes a long time – you’ve got to learn the language, you’ve got to learn the culture, you’ve got to grow into something.”
With education the cornerstone of the Australian Jesuits’
mission in India – St Xavier’s Hazaribag had been established the year of their
arrival, in 1951 – the newly ordained Fr Phil spent time teaching before being
appointed a parish priest at Mahuadanr and later Kunda. He was happily fulfilling
his parish duties when, without warning and much to his astonishment, he was
elected Major Superior (now known as Provincial) of Hazaribag Province. Retelling
the story with bemusement decades later, Fr Phil said he’d been en route to Mahuadanr
to help elect the new Major Superior when his plans were scuppered.
“We stopped at a parish on the way, and then we moved on and stopped at another parish, and then Fr Bernie Donnelly, who was the superior at the time said, ‘Oh, I've left the file at the previous parish’. It was evening at this stage, and we had passed through the jungle, which is locked down at night, they put chains across the road to stop illegal hunting. He said, ‘Can you go back and get the files? So I borrowed a motorcycle from the parish and managed to manoeuvre my way past all the chain gates through the jungle, and arrived about eight or nine o'clock at night back at the previous parish.”
The parish had already dispatched the file with a courier who was now on his way to Daltonganj. Next morning Fr Phil drove to Daltonganj, but the courier had already boarded a bus for Mahuadanr.
“So I followed the bus and caught up with it halfway through the jungle, and stopped the bus, got the file and drove on to Mahuadanr myself with the file. And Bernie said to me when I got there, ‘Oh, it doesn't matter, we've already decided, we’re done’. A few weeks later, when the word came through that I was chosen for the job, I was actually having a sleep-in. Bernie came and he said, ‘Look, I've come from Ranchi with the message that you're the Superior’. I said, ‘I can't be, I was never asked’. He said, ‘We knew you'd say no!’”
Jesuits in Timor-Leste respond to Easter Sunday flood crisis
Evacuation centres provide food, clothes and shelter for those temporarily displaced.
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Jesuits in Timor-Leste have been responding to the widespread destruction of Tropical Cyclone Seroja, an Easter Sunday nightmare that brought flash flooding and left 42 people dead, including a Timorese teacher at the Jesuit Mission supported Loyola College.
With an estimated 14,000 people temporarily displaced, Jesuit Mission has sent funds to assist Jesuit Social Service, who supported communities in six informal evacuation centres in Hare and Dili, areas badly affected by the flood.
[quotes]“Evacuation centres include convents, parish halls a university and religious houses. Now that the rain has stopped, we can begin to clean up and plan long-term solutions for these families.” [/quotes]
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[quotes_author color="#000"]Júlio Sousa SJ, Director of Jesuit Social Service Timor-Leste[/quotes_author]
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With thanks to Jesuit Mission supporters, these long-term solutions include purchasing and providing mattresses, bed sheets, kitchen and cooking utensils for 100 households, approximately 1,000 people.
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People walking through flood waters.
[quotes]“If we have sufficient resources we will certainly extend our help to more households. At the moment we have distributed food items and clothes to over 500 people.” [/quotes]
[quotes_author color="#000"]Júlio [/quotes_author]
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The mass displacement and infrastructural damage
caused by flooding waters and landslides additionally poses the threat of
spreading COVID-19, with Dili municipality seeing a resurgence of new cases in
recent months.
Jesuit Mission stands in solidarity with the devastated
families in Timor-Leste and urges our supporters to keep them in your thoughts
and prayers.
The Funeral Mass was held on Tuesday 13 April at 10:00am, at St Mary's Church, Ridge Street in North Sydney. A wake followed at the Ron Dyer Centre, and burial will be at Macquarie Park (Cnr Delhi Rd & Plassey Rd, Macquarie Park).
If you would like to make a donation in Fr Phil's memory, to support marginalised people around the world click here
Message from Helen Forde, Jesuit Mission CEO
I am deeply saddened to let you know that we lost a truly great man on 7th April - Fr Phil Crotty SJ, former Jesuit Mission Director and Hazaribag missionary of more than 50 years, died peacefully in his sleep. Fr Phil was 89 years old.
For me personally, Fr Phil was my hero. When I started at Jesuit Mission five years ago, I knew I had big shoes to fill. I still remember meeting him for the first time and feeling nervous. But Fr Phil’s warm and gentle presence made me feel instantly comforted – a feeling which never left me.
I will forever cherish the times I spent with Fr Phil over the past few years. He was a wonderful companion who offered wise counsel and friendship. I will greatly miss our morning tea catch ups and lunches at the local café where he reminisced so beautifully about his time in Hazaribag. He touched so many lives there and here in Australia – his legacy will be ever-lasting.
Vale Fr Phil. May you rest in peace my friend.
Helen Forde, CEO of Jesuit Mission.
Fr Phil leaving for India in 1952.
Click here if you would like to leave a donation in Fr Phil's memory, to support marginalised people around the world.
Fr Phil Crotty SJ reflects on 70 years of Jesuit Mission
Seventy years have passed since the Australian Jesuits set
about creating a mission in the Indian region of Hazaribag, and yet Fr Phil
Crotty SJ still remembers those earliest days as though they were just beginning
to unfurl. At home in Sydney, where he is now retired, the memories return to
him with all the clarity of reflections trapped inside a raindrop – the
tribulations and sorrows, the successes and joys and lamentations, the reflections
and stories generated over a lifetime spent working with some of India’s most
vulnerable people.
“We went to, I think it was Myer’s, on Bourke Street in Melbourne, and were given six khaki shirts and six khaki pairs of pants,” he recalls of the weeks leading up to his departure from his hometown, Melbourne.
“That was about the sum total of preparation,” apart from learning the Hindi alphabet on the voyage to Bombay.
Phil leaving for India in 1952.
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Aged just 20 at the time, Fr Crotty hadn’t ventured further than Sydney before sailing to India with a handful of fellow scholastics at the end of 1952, the year after Hazaribag mission was created.
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The Australians were responding to a call from a group of Belgian Jesuits who for many decades had run a mission at Ranchi which advocated in particular for tribal people whose land ownership was being exploited.
"The mission flourished so much they were not able to manage it with the manpower they had. So they looked around for another Jesuit province to support them. They offered the Northern part of their mission, where they had been least engaged… to the Australian Province, which was looking for a mission.”
The new arrivals immersed themselves in the language and
culture, in studying, teaching, working in parishes, spending time in communities
and generally trying to determine what form their own missioned theology would
take.
"If you're working with tribal people, you must understand their culture, their language, their history. What was the relationship there, and how does that fit alongside of, or intertwined with, the caste-system? It's a complicated picture."
The mission’s most urgent initial project, in 1951, was to establish an English medium high school, St Xavier’s Hazaribag, of which enrolees were largely boarders from Calcutta. Most of the Australian scholastics spent time working here in the early years, except for Fr Crotty says he was destined to be teaching in a Hindi environment.
“I was sent to a lovely place called Tongo where I spent six months practicing Hindi with the children in the school, teaching some classes and joining the boarders when they went fishing. That was a wonderful time.”
After his ordination in Hazaribag – where he was reunited with his mother for the first time since leaving Australia 12 years earlier – he served as parish priest in several of the parishes initiated by the Belgian Jesuits. Finally, he was appointed regional superior of Hazaribag (the role known today as “Provincial”).
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“As a Jesuit, you don't think much about it [as a career for yourself] – you're working together as a team doing a variety of jobs, you're part of the group. It was a wonderful team to work with –wonderful people, inspiring people.”
Hazaribag was growing steadily to include more educational facilities and a formation college for Jesuit novices.
In village parishes, meanwhile, the missionaries worked to enculturate the traditional mass with the rich Santali culture possessed of some parishioners, and continued to advocate for people dispossessed of their land. From the mission’s earliest days, it had forged strong partnerships with Carmelite, Franciscan, Holy Cross and other nuns whose own work focused on the establishment of community clinics and hospitals. Today, these facilities are playing an essential role in the provision of critical care for patients infected with COVID.
“It's huge what they do, what they have done there.”
And though the Australian Jesuits were far from home, the beneficence of Australian collaborators was pivotal to the success of the mission.
“It was taken for granted that you wouldn’t see family again, unless they came to India, which they did.”
Jesuit Mission itself was established as patron of the Hazaribag mission; the support generated through it by Australian volunteers, benefactors and Jesuit and Ignatian schools over seven decades is immeasurable.
"It was an extraordinary support system – more than a support system, it was a sort of a companionship. That's why I think they adopted the title co-missionaries. I think it’s very relevant because they were actually co-missionaries, and many of them visited India. It was a great sense of belonging and connectedness.”Students from St Josephs in Tarwa India.
After fifty years in India, Fr Crotty finally returned to
Australia to work with Jesuit Mission himself, eventually becoming its director
in 2008. By now, visa restrictions had made it difficult for Australian Jesuits
to work in India; moreover, the formation of Indian Jesuits had yielded a large
cohort of missionaries to which the baton could be handed. The ripples began to
reverberate beyond India’s borders, too, with Jesuit Mission applying the
experience and achievements accrued there to projects in places like Cambodia, Vietnam,
Thailand, Myanmar, and Timor-Leste.
One of the most recent developments supported by Jesuit
Mission is the establishment of a school in Cambodia – a project overseen for
the past six years by the new Australian Provincial, Fr Quyen Vu SJ. And when
COVID-19 struck Hazaribag with ferocity earlier this year, Jesuit Mission
mobilised resources, enabling Jesuits on the ground – including the few remaining
Australians from among those earliest missionaries – to provide vital community
care.
Such is the mission’s enduring legacy, one in which the
seeds sown by those pioneering Australian Jesuits have borne fruit not only in
Hazaribag but in places far removed from it. As it celebrates its 70th
anniversary, says Fr Crotty, the Hazaribag Province is as capable as the
Australian Jesuits were in 1951 to embark on its own mission. So far it has dispatched
missionaries to Cambodia and Myanmar and – in a poignant homecoming, of sorts –
Australia.
“Recently one of the tribals from Hazaribag, whose father was a leader in the parish where I was parish priest, came to do his tertianship in Australia. He’s a Jesuit now [and] he went to spend a month or more up in Wadeye and the Tiwi Islands. And it was just lovely to have him here, and to feel at home with him... and to see the fruit, if you like, of our work.”
As we celebrate 70 years of Jesuit Mission, we would like to express our utmost gratitude to all our loyal supporters. Your generosity has transformed the lives of vulnerable communities overseas since 1951.
It was great to see so many of our friends attend our second webinar! For those who missed out we are very pleased to be able to share it here with you all and hope you enjoy it.
Fr David Holdcroft SJ, founder of the Digital Inclusion Program shared how he developed the innovative project and the opportunity it brings to refugees in Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi.
Program participant Stany Dibwe shared the life-changing impact of the program on his own life.
Once again, we'd like to thank you for your ongoing support. It is because of your generosity that allows people like Stany to gain independence.
Aprilia, a graduate of Loyola College in Timor-Leste, feels empowered to one day represent her country as a female diplomat and leader.
At 19 years old Aprilia’s drive is inspiring, believing that females need to support one another, to challenge gender bias together and pave their own way to reach their dreams.
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[quotes] “I think that being a female leader is often underestimated by society. My experience in Loyola really shaped me to think that, though you are a woman you have the power to make change." [/quotes]
Last month on International Women's Day, Aprilia shared the importance of celebrating the achievements of all women during the pandemic.
[quotes]“2020 was not an easy year. I have seen the amazing effort of women who have had to balance between working, cooking and doing house chores, accompanying their kids, studying and finding time for themselves.” [/quotes]
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For
Aprilia, 2020 was devastating after it was confirmed that her opportunity to
study abroad in Germany was revoked due to COVID-19.
However,
this road bump did not deter Aprilia from chasing her dream and instead led her
to take up an incredible internship opportunity with the Asia Foundation in
Timor-Leste.
Here
she is gaining valuable insight from participating in programs that are helping
her community.
[quotes]“From February to August last year, I translated children’s books from English to Tetum. Now we are cooperating with the Minister of Education and the books will go to children in rural areas.” [/quotes]
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From
September to present, Aprilia has gained additional experience as a program
assistant with the same organisation, collating data through surveys on the
experience of her community during COVID-19.
[quotes]“I even met the Secretary of State. We want to publish the surveys all over Timor in order to make more effective policy that manages the needs of rural communities during the pandemic.” [/quotes]
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Whilst
continuing with her internship, Aprilia is applying for more scholarships to
study abroad, seeing education as the greatest opportunity for her to achieve
her dream of being a diplomat.
Aprilia’s pursuit for education as well as her desire to help others, demonstrates the tremendous efforts by women around the world who are influencing a new era of equal opportunity.
The importance of parents and teachers in education
Children living in the plantation and rural areas of Sri Lanka face extreme disadvantage and often miss out on receiving an education. In many cases, parents are not involved in their children’s education and don’t see its importance – as they never received the opportunity to go to school themselves. As a result of disengagement, young people often stop studying and become victims of drug traffickers, child labour, and abuse.
Together with our partner, Satyodaya Centre for Social Research and Encounter, we are working on Overcoming the Obstacles in Educating the Poor (OOEP). With the help of our supporters, the project is bringing children, parents, and teachers together for better education at school and at home.
18 year old Sanduni, youth volunteer at Satyodaya Centre.
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Through targeted activities—such as training workshops, community study centres and micro libraries—the ties between parents and teachers are strengthened to motivate children in their studies.
Thanks to your generosity, 18-year-old Sanduni has completed various studies at Satyodaya Centre and can now see a brighter future for herself and her family. Through education, she hopes to alleviate generational poverty and bring opportunity to rural children in the Central province of Sri Lanka.
[quotes]“I am one of the youth volunteers of Satyodaya and I have been able to motivate many other children on education. I regularly visit the Community Study Centre, reading at the little library and attending the IT class. I was able to complete the Leadership Training Course and after receiving my General Certificate of Education (Advanced Level) Examination results, I will be able to find reasonable employment and help my family… [/quotes]
[quotes]…The children in the worker families in tea plantations must be helped acquiring good education so they are able to find jobs and have some independence in life. I need my father, mother and all the members of my family to eat good food, wear good clothes, live in a good house and finally feel that we live a decent life.” [/quotes]
