New life from Cambodia’s Killing Fields

The Rector, Fr Cosme, and his seminarians

Demolishing an old garage and store might seem insignificant, but it needed a change of Government, many years of quiet progress and 9 months of waiting for the official approval of an architect’s plans.

At last, the five St John Mary Vianney Major Seminarians and their Professors in Phnom Penh can anticipate life beyond the converted barn on the perimeter of one of Cambodia’s many Killing Fields.

Almost 2 million Cambodians died during the Pol Pot regime. Many thousands, including the Bishop of Phnom Penh, Joseph Chhmar Salas, were forced into slave labour in the rice fields where they died of overwork, exhaustion and malnutrition. Many more, carefully photographed and documented in the detention centres, were tortured and executed, often on fabricated charges. Whilst the Khmer Rouge expelled all foreigners, they killed every Cambodian priest, Religious and many catechists in a national campaign to remove religion from the country. Religious houses, churches and cathedrals were demolished or converted into detention centres.

Yet the Pol Pot regime, in its extreme brutality, did not extinguish Faith. Missionaries, forbidden to cross over into Cambodia gave intensive support to refugees in camps near the Thai border, preparing them to cope with whatever they would find when they were eventually allowed back to their homes.

Starting to clear the ground

With the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1974, people began to return and rebuild their shattered lives. On 4 April 1990, the Government gave Catholic communities permission to worship freely. However so many Christians had died during the regime that in 1993, when Monsignor Lesouef, the former Apostolic Prefect of Kompong Cham, returned to Cambodia, and travelled to Kompong Chan, he waited in the market for a whole day but failed to find a single Christian. On his return to Phnom Penh, a young Catholic woman wrote to him from Kompong Cham. He came to meet her and, from that moment, resumed his missionary work, interrupted by his expulsion from Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge.

Gradually and very quietly, the Church began to re-establish itself. Today the diocese of Phnom Penh has five seminarians, the greatest number in Cambodia’s 450 years of a Catholic presence. Built on the site of a barn, the seminary is on the very edge of the Killing Fields where more than 1,800 Khmer Rouge victims are buried. Even today scraps of clothing and pieces of human bones are regularly discovered on the surface of the soil. Within the seminary chapel, the Crucifix, in which a piece of bone has been inserted, remains as a precious relic of those who paid the ultimate price.

 Yet there is hope. With five seminarians, more space is needed. After a lengthy bureaucratic delay, permission has been given to build eight extra bedrooms to accommodate future students and guests. Where there was a garage and a small store, there is now cleared ground and a few newly-dug holes for the laying of foundations.

The new extension is being funded by Missio and the Society of St Peter the Apostle (SPA) in England and Wales, which also helps to support the seminarians and the priests. The Rector, Fr Bruno Cosme, wrote to send the first photographs and his thanks. On 17 August, the five seminarians will go on pilgrimage to Ars, Nevers, Lisieux and Lourdes to pray for the people of Cambodia.

New life is emerging from the blood-soaked soil of the Killing Fields!