Category - Church

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Elsa’s Funeral at Mindinao
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To Palau and Back to Welcome the Bishop
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John Paul Ililau, the Latest Palauan to Leave Us
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Christmas, 2021
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Let Their Voices Be Heard!
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Dave Andrus: 50 Years a Jesuit and 30+ Years an Adopted Micronesian
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Angken Rapun: Deacon and Friend
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Happy 100th Anniversary to Us!

Elsa’s Funeral at Mindinao

On April 12, very early in the morning, I left Guam to attend the funeral of of Elsa Veloso, the “co-founder of MicSem” and a dear friend over the thirty years of her work with us. After seven hours at the airport in Manila, I caught a flight to Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao. There I was met by my old friends Danny and Arlene Dumantay, along with Elsa’s niece Melba. It was dinner time and we all had so much catching up to do that we decided to spend the night in the city and make the three-hour drive to Kinoguitan, Elsa’s hometown, the next day.

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To Palau and Back to Welcome the Bishop

During the last full week of February (20-24), Palau held a national health summit attended by guests from throughout the region and beyond. Jimmy Arriola from Saipan and I were among those asked to speak at the summit. Jimmy talked about various behavioral issues, while I spoke on suicide and social change. It’s an old theme, but still relevant to Palau these days as its suicide rate continues to climb. But that was not the only problem troubling Palau, as I learned from the old friends I ran into. Many pointed to the population decline in recent years: more locals leaving for the US and Filipino workers having a difficult time re-entering after the Covid years. Then, too, the number of deaths now surpasses the number of births each year, we were told.

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Christmas, 2021

“Silver bells, silver bells. It’s Christmas time in the city…” That was the song the St. Andrew’s choir presented at our first Christmas dinner in the seminary 65 years ago. At those words, the faces of my fellow novices fell as we remembered what we had left behind just a few months earlier. Today, when I listen to the song the touch of nostalgia is still there, but now it brings a smile, in recognition of all the happy memories in the islands as well as back “in the city.”

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Let Their Voices Be Heard!

Let people’s voices be heard, Pope Francis tells the church. Not just the voices of the clergy and those who speak from the altar, but the voices of those who are normally silent. The voices of those who sit quietly in the pews, and even those who have stopped attending church altogether. The call for a church synod is to make this happen.

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Dave Andrus: 50 Years a Jesuit and 30+ Years an Adopted Micronesian

We had no way of knowing, when young Dave Andrus entered the Society in 1971, what a treasure he would be for our mission in Micronesia. Born in Louisiana, Dave would spend most of his Jesuit life in these islands. More than that, he would become, in his own quiet and unassuming way, the lifeblood of the Pohnpei church for three decades or more.

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Angken Rapun: Deacon and Friend

About 50 years ago–it must have been in the early 1970s–I first met Angken Rapun on Tol, the westernmost island in Chuuk. Angken was hard to miss. He was a rugged, good-looking young man who told me he had played football on Guam during his high school days. That was easy to believe, given his size. In 1968, not long after his return to Chuuk, he married Kintina. They had several children–most of them as well-built as their dad–and the couple would have celebrated their golden wedding anniversary next year if Angken had lived. 

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