“The call to Mission is as relevant today, as it was the day Jesus proclaimed it two thousand years ago,” says Fr Robert McCulloch, an Australian Columban missionary who has spent more than a quarter of a century in Pakistan.
“While missionaries, including Columbans, are, in a sense, at the frontline for the Church’s Mission in the world today, the Church in Australia is also called to respond to Mission, globally and locally,” he continues.
This missionary, with family links to Ballarat and Cheltenham in Victoria, is engaged in various ways with a people whose passion for cricket is well known to Australians. Pakistani society is predominantly Islamic, and is beset with challenges which seem to be associated with such environments. One of these challenges is the conflict between religions, a frequent news item in our media.
“These have been very tense months for Catholics in Pakistan,’’ says Fr McCulloch, whose base is Karachi.
“Since late last year, five churches, two convents, four schools, and one clinic have been attacked and burnt down by Muslim fundamentalist mobs,” he adds. “There were deliberate sacrilegious attacks on the tabernacles in all cases, and the Blessed Sacrament was desecrated. The mobs knew exactly what they were doing. But the temple built of living stones continues to grow!”
It is the ‘growing of the living stones’ that informs the challenging work of Columban and other missionaries.
“A few weeks ago,” Fr McCulloch says, “I received back 62 people into the Church in a village about three hours’ drive out from Badin in interior Sindh. They lapsed 20 years ago due to threats from Hindu bhagats (religious leaders) and finally decided to return. All very familiar in the Catholic experience as a good reading of the history of the Church during the Roman persecutions shows.”
A Church of living stones needs to build its faith and human capacity, as it participates in, and enriches the wider society it belongs to. In addition to his pastoral and missionary duties, Fr McCulloch teaches Liturgy, Church History and Patristics at Pakistan’s National Catholic Theological Institute, whose students can now obtain a B.Theol degree from Melbourne University due to the efforts of Yarra Theological Union and the Melbourne College of Divinity. He also has a strong interest in the health field, having helped set up a Centre for Prevention and Management to counter hepatitis.
A media release from the Columban Mission Centre, Melbourne
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Fr Robert Mc Culloch with Fr Rashid Peter, OFM, in Pakistan. | |
