Pakxan (AsianNews/Ucan) - More than 3,000 persons were in Pakxan, 120 kilometres north of Vientiane, in the central part of Laos, for the ordination of Fr Benedict Bennakhone Inthirath, an Oblate and the first parishioner in Pakxan to become a priest.
The news agency UCAN reports that the ceremony, which took place on December 29 in the church of Our Lady of Lourdes, was presided over by the Oblate bishop of Vientiane, Jean Khamse Vithavong, who concelebrated with the bishops of the country's other three apostolic vicariates: Tito Banchong Thopayong of Luang Prabang, Louis Marie Ling Mangkhanekhoun of Pakse, and Jean Sommeng Vorachak of Savannakhet. Also participating in the ceremony was Archbishop Salavtore Pennacchio, the apostolic delegate in Laos.
Among the people who took part in the ceremony - who also came from places like Thailand and the Philippines - were 36 priests, 16 of them from Laos. Also present were officials of the Front for National Construction, the organisation affiliated with the communist party that supervises religious activities and approved the ordination.
The ordination of Fr Bennakhone, who will turn 36 in August, was the first ever performed in the parish, while the few ordinations of other Oblates that have taken place in recent years have usually been conducted in Vientiane, or in the case of some diocesan priests, in Thakhek, in the vicariate of Savannakhet, the site of the national seminary opened in 198.
The fifth of eleven children, Fr Bennakhone was born in the village of Pakxan Neua. He completed his studies up to high school in Vientiane, before going to Australia to get a master's degree in economics at the University of Melbourne. He was ordained a deacon in Sydney on June 14 of last year.
During the ceremony, Bishop Khamse urged the priest - who chose as his motto the phrase of the Gospel of Luke "I am among you as a servant" - to "learn from Jesus, our Good Shepherd, and always keep in mind that Jesus did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life to redeem many people".
In Laos, there are about 42,000 Catholics in a population of 5.4 million inhabitants, most of them Buddhist. There are no foreign missionaries in the country: in 1975, when the Patheth Lao took power, they were all driven out, and have not been permitted to return.
