I am a priest of the Diocese of Loikaw in eastern Myanmar (also known as Burma), a country ruled by harsh military dictatorship over the past 45 years. We do not have much industry; most of the people look to the soil for a living. Our natural resources of gas, oil, timber and gemstones are exploited by foreign countries, principally China. I have worked as a missionary in Peru with the Columban Fathers for six years. 
The Church in Myanmar
About 89% of Burmese are Buddhists. Just 4% are Christians, and are found mainly among the northern tribes with a background in animism. Italian, French and Irish missionaries brought Catholicism to these tribes. Today, Myanmar is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia where most of the priests and religious are indigenous.
The Church’s activities are pastoral and social, with little emphasis on education and health as the State insists on total control of those areas. Priests, nuns and lay-missionaries from Myanmar are presently found in a variety of countries such as Fiji, Japan, the Philippines, USA, Papua New Guinea, France, Australia, Thailand, Italy, Tanzania etc. For a relatively young Church, evangelised in the not too distant past, it is remarkable how swiftly we, in turn, have become evangelisers.
On Mission in Lima, Peru
When I first started to work in San Pedro y San Pablo Parish in Lima I felt quite powerless. Language was a challenge as I needed to become proficient in two languages simultaneously (since most of the Columbans are English speakers they tended to use that language among themselves).
Becoming fluent in Spanish was easier as I had the chance to speak and hear Spanish all the time in my pastoral work. I found men, women and children to be very generous with their time and very kind; they became my Spanish teachers.
I felt happier going out to meet them rather than hanging about the parish house. I did make some problems for myself by eating food from street-vendors’ stalls.
My first parish priest, the late Columban Fr John O’Connell, who had already spent 53 years in Lima, warned me, “Marino, your stomach is not used to what Peruvians are used to, so please be careful.” I wasn’t involved in construction projects but focused on building up relationships with the people and am happy to have chosen that way of working.
Similarities and Contrasts
I found the faith life of Peruvians to be quite different from ours in Myanmar. In Peru they believe that God is very present in their lives. I remember celebrating the feast of St John the Baptist and seeing how the devotees danced before the image of the saint in homage to God. They seemed to include all that they were living in their relationship with God. All I could do was to affirm the beauty of how they live their faith.
Our religious practice in Myanmar seems to me more Roman. Our Catholic faith has not been integrated with the ancient religious rites of our people. We have not yet put our own stamp on the faith as the Peruvians have done. Also, in Myanmar our church life is quite clerical, with little lay participation at any level of leadership.
Returning to Myanmar
I am now looking forward to returning to my own people and taking on whatever mission my bishop may entrust to me. I am grateful to the good Lord, and to all the Columban missionaries who have supported me unconditionally with magnanimous hearts. I am happy to have served as a missionary overseas. I am proud of my family who prepared and guided me and are always present through their prayers and moral support.
I am proud of my country and my people who were once evangelised and now offer some of its own men and women to be missionaries elsewhere. We, the new missionaries in other lands, are the fruit of the missionary work accomplished by those former missionaries who generously shed their blood on our soil.
The Baptismal Call to Mission
Fr Robert Kuhn of Phekhon Diocese, who recently returned to Myanmar, and I, of the Loikaw Diocese, are the first missionaries to have gone from our country to South America. I am from Kayah State and belong to the Kayah Kangan tribe.
We are one of seven tribes in the State, each with our own language, so our common language is Burmese. We come from that part of Myanmar evangelised by the PIME Italian missionaries.
We have been blessed by the foreign missionaries and we feel indebted to them. Our Myanmar bishops constantly invite all Catholics to become missionaries, either locally or in foreign lands, in response to our Baptismal call to mission.
We are grateful to the Missionary Society of St Columban which has given us this opportunity to be short-term cross-cultural missionaries in Latin America.
With this experience, I am sure that we now have a deeper understanding of Christian mission which will help us immensely in our work as Christian missionaries wherever we may go.
Since he wrote this article, Fr Marino Nanjha has returned to pastoral work in Myanmar.
