(Phnom Penh) – On Saturday 30 November, in a last meeting with the confreres of the Cambodia Salesian Delegation of the THA Province, the Regional Councillor for East Asia Oceania (EAO), Fr. Joseph Phu, officially concluded the Extraordinary and Canonical Visitation to the Saint Paul Province (Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, THA.)

Fr. Joseph read the Extraordinary Conclusion presented to the Salesians in Cambodia, after he did a flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh with the Provincial Economer Br. Thanad Anan John Baptist for the final meeting. He did a journey of more than 5 thousand km inside the territories of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, this last one with a single Salesian house in the Capital.

He visited every one of the 14 canonical communities with their great diversity of their pastoral, educational and missionary realities, including technical schools, parishes, youth centers, pastoral works with Indigenous young people and others. Most of the communities are present in Thailand with 14 canonical communities, including two in Cambodia and one in Laos. Salesians arrived in Thailand for the first time on 25th October 1927 and was erected as a Province on 20th December 1937, being Fr. Gaetano Passoti the first visitor and Fr. Giovanni Casseta the first province starting in 1938. The current Provincial is Fr. Anthony Boonlert. In 2027 the THA Province is getting ready to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Salesians, who appointed Br. Roberto Panetto opened some humanitarian educational works at the Cambodian refugee camps at the Thai border in 1989, opening the way for the entrance of the Congregation in Cambodia in 1991.

Fr. Joseph underlined the dedication and commitment of the 16 missionaries (among them already some native Salesians): 11 working, 2 retired (on wheelchair or on bed) and 4 in initial formation. He congratulated the missionaries because even if Christianity is a tiny minority, there are already some native vocations in Cambodia, with the hope that next year there will be the first Cambodian Salesian priest: “Let us sow the seeds and let the Master of the field make them grow by his Divine Force (the Spirit) and harvest them with the later generations of missionaries,” he said.