Columban Fr Kurt Zion Pala with parishioners in Myanmar, 2025. - Photo: Fr Kurt Zion Pala
We started from a group of diocesan priests from Ireland who saw the great mission to bring the Good News to China. It grew from the dream of our founders, Frs Edward Galvin and John Blowick.
St Columbans Mission Society built churches, schools and communities. Wherever Columbans went, they brought and shared Gospel joy. In the eighties in the Philippines, they started accepting local vocations from the parishes where they served. In the past, there was great reluctance to accept and start the formation of local vocations to become Columbans, even if there were already many showing interest in joining.
I am the “first fruit” of the Columbans from my diocese, as my ordaining bishop put it. I had my very first missionary experience on the islands of Fiji. After ordination, I was sent to Myanmar (formerly Burma), but I fully intended to return to the Fiji islands - my first love. I wanted to live and die in Fiji. This, I realised later on in my missionary life, was the wrong ideal. As Columbans, we must all be open to where the Columban mission calls us, not just to our personal missionary goals. When assigned to Myanmar, I was reluctant and sad to go but also open and excited to explore a new mission. I fell in love with the country despite the difficult Burmese language.
Myanmar has for a very long time suffered from an ongoing conflict. As missionaries, we are challenged with visa applications and the constant uncertainties around us. And that is what mission is all about. I believe when we have become so comfortable, we need to be shaken and reawakened to something even greater - the call to be small and vulnerable.
On my first few nights in a parish in the Diocese of Myitkyina, I could hear what sounded like fireworks, but I thought to myself, it is too early for New Year celebrations. I realised they were gunshots and not fireworks. There was a time when I had to anoint one of the young people I work with, who was shot during one of the many youth protests in the city after the coup. Just days after the coup, young people, including members of the Catholic Student Action Myitkyina, joined the many protests in the city.
Every day, I would receive invitations to join them, but it would be dangerous for me, as a foreigner, to join and it would endanger the others. Columbans have a long history in Kachin land in the north of Myanmar. We have built great friendships with the Kachin people. And the Kachin people are very grateful to the early Columbans who arrived in the area. They stationed themselves in remote hills and mountains, living and struggling alongside the people.
To help vulnerable and helpless young people, we organised a movement of Catholic students studying in the government schools and universities in the Diocese of Myitkyina. The movement allowed many young Catholic students to build friendships and gave them opportunities to meet students from other universities or even within their own university. We also reached out to students and youth of other Christian churches and even other religions.
After the coup, it became harder to visit the universities. Also, many students and teachers decided to protest and not return to school or university. Many others felt they had lost their way, experiencing traumatic memories and anxiety. Together with some members of the Catholic Student Action Myitkyina and with the support and help of teachers, we opened an alternative student centre, the Student Learning Resources Centre (SLRC), which offers skills development training, mental health awareness interventions and an internship program for students. Being a Columban, I want to respond to the needs of these young people. Thanks to our generous benefactors, we can provide these alternative programs that benefit many young people in the diocese.
I joined the Columbans as a high school graduate in 1999. I had dreams of serving and living in foreign lands just like my mentor and recruiter, Fr Dick Pankratz, an American Columban priest who spoke Cebuano with an accent. During those years, many Columbans from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the US still lived and worked in the Philippines. At gatherings, the number of Columbans from the these “home regions” would always outnumber us members of the “mission region.” That rapidly changed.
In 2018, I attended my first Society General Assembly in Taiwan. I was very excited but also anxious as a delegate. I took it seriously as a big responsibility to be the representative of my Myanmar Mission Unit. During one of the meetings of the assembly, we were asked to look around the room. The facilitator asked, “How many of you come from the Asia-Pacific region or the South American region? How many of you come from Ireland, the US, Australia, New Zealand, or Great Britain?”
We are changing. There is more diversity among us Columbans in terms of skin colour, culture and even gender. We are now truly representative of the universal Church.
But lately, the talk of our diminishing numbers and resources has brought some of us to question our very existence and purpose. The recent survey and discussions also affected me a lot, adding more to my own anxieties living and working here in Myanmar. We are now smaller, just like in the past. The first Columbans were no more than what we are now. We were small back then, just like how Jesus started with a group of twelve. We should live more with faith and hope. We are messengers of the Good News! “Be brave, be generous and above all be joyful!” Pope Francis reminded the young people of Myanmar during his visit here. We, too, must also pay heed to these words.
Being Columban means doing what I can to respond to the signs of the times - that includes finding resources and writing project proposals and using these resources to respond to the needs of the young people that I work with closely. When I feel helpless, I remind myself how much more helpless these young people must feel.
But I am different from the Columbans that many of the older Kachin people grew up with. They were tall, fair-skinned, with bright blue eyes. I am quite the opposite. I am Filipino and brown. Being different has allowed me to visit and reach places my other Columban brothers could not. I can easily blend with the people.
When I meet local people, they often mistake me for a local priest or a local person. They will immediately speak to me in their language and be relaxed. This allows me to enter any space quite easily without attracting attention.
But am I Columban enough? Who is a Columban? What is our Columban identity now? Do I get to take part in the major decisions of the St Columbans Mission Society?
Starting a ministry can also be quite a challenge. I do not have all the resources and support I have back at home in the Philippines. But I try to appeal for support. I speak to the people at home and tell them stories of the lives of the young people in Myanmar. Many of them have responded by sharing some of their financial resources. I am grateful for the generosity of Filipinos who are touched by the suffering of the young people of Myanmar.
Being Columban and being brown may have been two different realities in the past. But today we are seeing the fruits of the first Columban priests who left their homes to bring and share Gospel joy to the islands of the Philippines and other parts of the world.
I thank the Columbans of the earlier years who helped share Gospel joy with our lands. As a Filipino Columban, I am very grateful to the many Columbans who lived and worked in Mindanao, where I come from. As a Columban today, I continue their tradition and mission to bring that same faith and Gospel joy to the people of Myanmar as a Columban missionary priest.
We must celebrate being “small”, just as Christ Jesus celebrates the “smallness” of a child. Maybe God wants to remind us again to trust Him, just like a child trusts. “Small is beautiful,” an economist once said.
We are Columbans. We are small in number but beautiful in our mission. I am grateful for this gift to be a member of the Columban Missionaries.
Columban Fr Kurt Zion Pala lives and works in Myanmar.
Listen to "Being Columban and being brown"
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - November/December 2025
