Below are stories from past issues of Columban Mission magazine. The Columban Fathers publish Columban Mission magazine eight times a year. Subscriptions are available for just $15 per year. Sign up to receive our next issue. Read more about Columban Mission magazine.
Over the course of nearly 100 years, Columban missionaries have been caught up in major wars and insurrections in the countries where we live and serve. Columbans and other missionaries have grappled with the question to go or stay in times of crisis.
St. Columban, a great Irish missionary monk, died in 615 A.D. in Bobbio, Italy. Columban missionaries (who have St. Columban as their patron) have worked in Fiji since 1952.
It is difficult for us in Myanmar (Burma) to get visas so we have to leave and go to Bangkok, Thailand, frequently to renew our visas. Bangkok is very highly developed with its high rise buildings, cars and buses crawling at a snail’s pace and sidewalks crowded with people.
My name is Louis Ybanez, and I am a Columban seminarian from the Philippines. As a part of my formation to be a missionary priest, I have been assigned for a two year hands-on experience to the Columban parish at the town of Matli, in the arid Sindh province in the south of Pakistan.
Each Monday at 7:00 p.m. in Seoul, Korea, believers come to celebrate the Eucharist in Kwang Hwa Mun Plaza in the center of Seoul. They come to the site where members of the families bereaved in Korea’s worst maritime accident continue their protest demanding justice.
My pilgrimage in – indeed conversion to – interreligious dialogue started even before I learned the phrase interreligious dialogue.
Each one of us will have our own memories of the events that touched and made an impression on us this year. We have experienced the mass movement of refugees fleeing war, poverty and violence seeking a more secure environment which they would hope to call home.
I have often been asked, “What is the biggest change you have seen since you started working pastorally with people affected by HIV and AIDS?” I have pondered this question.
Who stole away those golden leaves which recently had fallen from the trees
Decorating those tired and resting fields
Those golden shredded years came back to me with tears
As the Autumn harvest spread its leaves over my fading years.
I met Bishop Jin about 25 years ago on my first visit to China and dined with him in his former residence next to the Cathedral. This was before I actually came to live in China. I had been introduced to him by Fr.
The Columbans are a society of missionaries, including priests and lay people, who minister to people of various cultures as a way of witnessing to the universal love of God.