End of 35 years of Columban Ministry in Lahore, Pakistan

Columban Fr Liam O'Callaghan shares with us the story of how St Columban's Parish, Lahore, began and how it developed.

On July 1, 2014 the Columbans handed responsibility for St. Columban’s parish, Greentown, back to the Archdiocese of Lahore. This meant an end to 35 years of Columban ministry in the Punjab Province in northern Pakistan with the Archdiocese of Lahore. Columban Missionaries, however, continue to minister in the Hyderabad Diocese located in the Sindh province in southern Pakistan.

St. Columban’s parish was established on the 29th of April 2007 when an existing big city parish, St Francis Kot Lakhpat, was divided in order to provide a better service to the people. Frs Tom Hanley, Gabriel Rojas and myself began the new parish after we handed St Paul’s Parish, Shadbagh, back to the Archdiocese after 23 years of Columban service.

St. Columban’s parish is on the southern perimeter of Lahore city, which is a rapidly expanding area as many people head to the cities in the hope of a better life. In fact, Pakistan has the highest urbanized percentage of the population (37%) in Asia. The area of the parish is quite extensive, stretching 35kms from east to west. The majority of families (approx. 70%) live in the city while the remainder live in villages spread over this wide area.

One of the first tasks undertaken by us was to do a detailed survey of all the families of the new parish. From this survey we discovered there were 1,820 Catholic families. The social and employment details of the survey revealed a rather bleak picture as, apart from a small number of people who are government employees or have a profession, the vast majority find employment as sanitary workers or as day labourers or factory workers.

For the majority of families life is a struggle and the basic needs such as education and healthcare are often times beyond their means. The education details, likewise, were disappointing, revealing that while growing numbers of young people are achieving higher education, many only have primary level education and unfortunately a large number are illiterate. Christians have the added disadvantage of being a 2% minority in an, as yet, intolerant society. In these circumstances it is very hard for a Christian to progress.

Like Shadbagh this was also a new parish which gave us more freedom to bring in new ideas and develop the parish in new ways. We decided to work on the priorities of building up the Christian community, the formation of lay leaders, Christian-Muslim dialogue and Justice, Peace and Environmental concerns.
 
In the first few months we hired a theologian, Mushtaq Assad, who had worked in various teaching institutions such as the Catechist Training Centre and the Pastoral Centre, Multan. Mushtaq played a significant role in the formation efforts over the years with his Bible classes in many parish areas.

Our main focus in the parish was the building up of local communities. There are now 21 active communities, each with a church/community hall and cared for by one of the nine parish catechists, each of whom has responsibility for two or three of these communities. Eleven of those buildings were built during the past seven years with funding from the Irish Government through Misean Cara, Columban funding, the Garda Third World Fund and the McCaffrey family who did substantial fundraising in memory of their brother and uncle, Columban Fr Pat McCaffrey, who is buried in Greentown. Fr Pat’s niece, Siobhan McCaffrey, came three times from Ireland to volunteer at St Paul’s High school, Greentown, where she worked on the English syllabus with the teachers and students.

Over the last two years we ran a formation programme for about 50 lay leaders, roughly six per catechist area. They received training twice a month for the first year and once a month after that and are now actively working with the catechists visiting families, conducting prayer services and funerals. Their commitment is inspiring.

Another area of focus was the Sunday School Ministry, which is important as the majority of children who go to school do not attend Christian schools and so have no access to religious education. There are now 15 Sunday schools operating in the parish, with regular seminars for 40 plus Sunday school teachers, who give great voluntary service.

Each year there were three big programmes: Christmas, Pentecost and August 14 (Independence Day) when all the schools came together at the parish centre, sometimes totalling over 300 children. Apart from the above activities, a number of parish groups i.e. youth, women, prayer group and choirs are giving tremendous service.

Building up relations with the Muslim community was also a priority, though often not easy because of the tense situation at various times during the years and especially with the growth and spread of an extremist and intolerant version of so-called Islam. We held an Iftar meal and programme every year during the fasting month of Ramadan for Muslim neighbours and friends and built up other contacts with various Muslim groups.

It was during two particularly difficult times, a blasphemy case and the encroachment of land leading to an attempted closing of the road to the church, school and graveyard, that the benefits of those friendly contacts were seen. It was precisely those contacts and good working relationships that led to the successful outcome of those two issues.

For me, as the time came near to leave, there was a real sense of loss and an emotional wrench. So much had happened in a relatively short period of time but it is the friendships, love and warmth that we all received that I will carry with me most.

Columban Fr Liam O'Callaghan has spent most of his missionary life in Pakistan.

Read more from The Far East, November/December 2014