The past flows into the future

The major festival in Phnom Penh is celebrated when the waters of the Tonle Sap reverse their flow. In the Battambang Cathedral on 24 May the ordination of Phongphand Phoktavi, universally known as Jub, also marked a point when a stream flowing from the past was seen to flow into the future.

Many of those who took part in the ceremony had been friends of Jub when he worked in the Cambodian refugee camps 25 years ago. The Jesuit Mission in Cambodia was later born out of the Jesuit Refugee Service presence there. A time for memory. But the many children present at his ordination were the future of the Church in which he will serve.

In the 1980s, Jub worked in a JRS program for landmine victims. The program was at Site 2, a huge Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. The director of the program was Bishop Kike Figaredo, then a Jesuit student. Kike and Jub learned how important it was for people, isolated by their injuries, to experience community and to gain skills that would help them support themselves.

When Sr Denise Coghlan led a team into Cambodia, Jup was part of it. At first the Government was suspicious of foreigners and restricted their movement. But they made Cambodian friends who helped them establish works, including Banteay Prieb, a school for the handicapped. There Jub again joined Kike.

Jub also served JRS on the task force that went into East Timor after the 1999 referendum and its violent aftermath. He went into the mountain country and made easy friendships with the East Timorese.

After some time working with Northern Thailand with refugees and migrant workers from Myanmar, Jub entered the Jesuit noviceship in Singapore in 2002. He studied in the Philippines and completed his theological studies in Australia.

The ordination Mass was celebrated by Bishop Emile Destombes. Kike Figaredo, now Apostolic Prefect of the Battambang area, was among the Bishops present. One of 11 children, Jub was joined at his ordination by his mother and surviving siblings. His mother, aged 93, was at the centre of the celebrations, helping to vest Jub. She had made hundreds of rosary beads, and gave them to all those who joined his first Mass. His brother Vichai, a Jesuit in Thailand, concelebrated at the Mass.

One of the most moving moments of Jub’s First Mass was the blessing dance. The dancers included many young disabled people who took part in their wheel chairs. The dance came from the traditional past, and the dancers’ joy and vitality pointed to the future of which Jub will be part.