Since 1918, the Missionary Society of St Columban has been sharing the Gospel in solidarity with the poor throughout the world. Today, Columbans including priests, Sisters and lay missionaries work in 16 countries around the globe in conjunction with lay men and women within the local communities. Columban Fr Peter Woodruff spent several years travelling around the Columban world and interviewing the men and women engaged in mission work.
The stories collected here provide a rare look at a moment in time in the continuing mission work and the ongoing Columban story. Each story is unique and different, but all of them share in furthering the work of mission today. Explore their first-hand accounts of what it means to be a missionary in today’s ever changing world.
Fr Peter Woodruff, Australian by birth, is a member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban and was ordained in 1967. He worked as a missionary priest in parishes located on the northern periphery of Lima, Peru, where much of his prior vision of life was challenged and reshaped by a radically different social reality where the quest for social change and an emerging liberation theology provoked a lengthy and rather chaotic review of many aspects of life and Christian faith.
Since leaving Peru in 2009, Peter has travelled to countries where Columban missionaries work, interviewing priests, Sisters, lay missionaries and those with whom they work. He has written and ghost written many stories that serve as raw material for the three English language mission magazines of the Columbans in Australia and New Zealand, U.S., Ireland and Britain. Fr Peter currently lives at St Columbans, Essendon, Australia.
The book can be purchased from www.bookdepository.com
Read more from The Far East, March 2014