MYANMAR UCAN Commentary - Young People Must Be Organized, Recognized And Empowered

PEKHON, Myanmar (UCAN) -- Father Albert Pho Kwah knows from experience that ministering to young Catholics in Myanmar is both testing and immensely rewarding.

Now 34, the priest has been engaged in youth ministry for a decade. Born in 1973 to a Catholic mother and Anglican father in Mobye, Pekhon township, in eastern Myanmar's Shan state. His family moved several times. He joined St. John the Baptist Minor Seminary in Loikaw and St. Teresa's Seminary High School in Taunggyi, then St. Joseph's Major Seminary in May Myo, Mandalay archdiocese. He studied philosophy at St. Joseph's Major Seminary in Yangon.

In 1997, Father Pho Kwah was ordained a priest in Mobye parish. He served in youth ministry at the parish and diocesan levels until 2000, when he was appointed national Catholic youth coordinator.

This gave him the opportunity to not only oversee several national youth congresses and forums that grew popular under his leadership, but also to take Myanmar Catholics abroad to World Youth Day events in Canada and Germany.

After Pekhon diocese was created in December 2005 from Taunggyi archdiocese, the new bishop asked him to return and work in Pekhon, where he currently serves as diocesan social communications director.

As part of his new responsibilities, he uses the Internet, digital audiovisual recording and other modern communications technologies for evangelization, such as presenting catechism and Gospel songs.

In the following commentary for UCA News, Father Pho Kwah shares his joys and challenges of ministering to young Catholics nationwide:

I love to live where there are lots of green trees. I mean this both literally and figuratively, as in working with young people.

There is some irony in my ministering to young people. My own youth was not the same as that of the young people I met during my six years as national coordinator of the Myanmar Church's youth ministry. This is because I was brought up as a seminarian devoted to consecrated life. I did not think of myself as a "typical youth."

My eyes were opened through my youth apostolate work on weekends when I was a seminarian, and then through working with young people at the national and international levels following my priestly ordination in 1997.

I found that young people have many abilities and the capacity to grow. There might be disagreements among them, which often have much to do with differences in their ethnic background, education and living standard, but there are also means to bring them together.

The young people's strength, I feel, is that they love to be together, even more than with their families. They live to be united.

In July 2000, after a few years working with young people of Taunggyi, the Myanmar bishops appointed me coordinator for the National Catholic Youth Commission.

This was a major turning point, an opportunity to tackle the youth mission at the national level, though I think they chose me because they couldn't find another volunteer.

I shared with the young people a common love for music and modern technology such as the Internet. The funny thing is, I did not teach them so much as they taught me, about life.

In 2000 and 2001, I went to all the dioceses in Myanmar to see what the young people were doing, and to conduct some leadership courses and meetings. Those journeys helped me understand the challenges facing young people and the difficulties the Church faces in engaging them.

Since the military junta seized power in 1988, the education of young people has been set back. In the early and mid-1990s, academic institutes, particularly universities, were opened and closed on and off by the government on the pretext of protecting peace. This negatively affected youth education. Worst of all, the education ministry's so-called experimental educational system, making changes now and then, was implemented not to educate young people but to close their eyes.

Affected by economic sanctions imposed on Myanmar by the West and the government's mismanagement, the overall economy of the country has fared badly, with high levels of inflation, unemployment and poverty. The fallout is that many young university graduates are jobless. It seems as if there is no future for them.

Given the despair, alienation and hopelessness, many young people resort to drugs or get caught up in various other social illnesses such as crime, family problems and HIV/AIDS.

Young people are also vulnerable to negative effects of globalization, such as the many unhealthy media influences and imported culture that destroy Myanmar traditions. As a result, many young people are victims of circumstance and become a burden on society.

For the Church, the challenge is acute. Many young Catholics are not interested in Church activities and the progress of youth movements has been slow and unsatisfactory.

There are various reasons for this, one being the Church's failure to organize and encourage young people to participate in Church activities. There is no proper person to take care of the young people in parishes or even in some cases on the diocesan level. The main cause of this is the difficulty of finding people in the dioceses with enough education to fill these posts.

In the Catholic community there is lack of understanding of the need and purpose of youth movements, and lack of recognition of the fact that young people are potential leaders who will serve the Church and community in the future. Bishops and priests should take charge of training and guiding youth.

When we look at young people in Myanmar, we can see a major difference between those educated in the city and those educated in the countryside. Those who live in the main cities may have the opportunity to go to private schools, but those in the small towns and villages may have little choice but to go to a government school, assuming their parents don't take them out of school to work.

Apart from secular education, there has been too little input of religious values and principles, leading to shallow faith and lack of seriousness toward the Church. This may be due partly to the lack of young role models in the Church.

Meanwhile, parents are generally uneducated and lack spiritual formation. Poor parenting then results in low or loose moral character of some young people. And on top of all this, the primary concern for many young people is making a living.

On a structural level in the Church, there is weak leadership, networking, affiliation and cooperation among youth organizations on the diocesan level. Poor transportation and communications makes information flow slow.

The Church has failed to organize or implement formation programs and courses for young people. Diocesan commissions and offices tend to be hampered by the struggle for outside funding.

As national coordinator, I found first-hand that dealing with these difficulties is tough. When I organized young people for the 2002 World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada, some "opportunists" did not come back to Myanmar after the celebration. They decided to emigrate illegally. That may have been my fault, because I recommended that they participate without delving into their real intentions, and I can understand that young people want to find something better for themselves.

At the national level, we held five congresses and two forums during my tenure, meetings that were very successful. What I found among the young people is a willingness to volunteer and participate if one is willing to go that extra mile for them.

When I handed over the key of the National Catholic Youth Commission office to the new director in June 2006, because I wanted to give others a chance at leadership, I felt there was still a massive amount to be done.

Young people in Myanmar need to be organized. They are also in urgent need of formation, encouragement and empowerment, a challenge to which the local Church has not risen.

Ten years of growing awareness makes me realize the importance of getting young people ready for the rapid modernization taking place in Myanmar society. They need to understand the dangers and side effects of a rushed life, as progress and decline are parallel paths. They need to take care of their spiritual life, as they are like sheep stalked by a wolf.

Young people are the future of the Church. It is not only the responsibility of bishops, priests and nuns. Parents and educated laypeople should all get involved. We need to instill into young people awareness of the value of education and leadership from the lowest levels, in every family, village and community.

We need to engage young people through media in catechism classes and get them interested in the Church and in its teachings. One way to do this is to use the Internet and other communication tools.

We need to be careful not to claim youth gatherings are waste of time and money. As I found out, they are a very effective means to organize young people, for them to get to know each other, to build a community of love and launch development programs.

Youth-to-youth leadership is the most attractive way to empower young people. They learn from their friends, neighbors and peers more than from teachers and trainers.

There is still so much to be done. I hope that soon there will be many green trees in the garden of the Myanmar Catholic Church.

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