Pope urges Thais to practice faith with joy
BANGKOK » Pope Francis ministered to Thailand’s tiny Catholic community Friday, urging Thais young and old to practice their faith with joy and with “a Thai face and flesh” in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country.
Thousands of Thais welcomed Francis as he traveled to St. Peter’s Parish, a Catholic community outside Bangkok, to pray at the sanctuary of Thailand’s first martyred priest.
There, he told a few hundred priests and nuns that he read “with some pain” that for many Thais, Christianity is “a religion for foreigners.”
“This should spur us to find ways to talk about the faith in dialect, like a mother who sings lullabies to her child,” he said. “With that same intimacy, let us give faith a Thai face and flesh, which involves much more than making translations.”
Children dressed as monks and nuns, as well as real clergy and ordinary Catholics, cheered him as he passed through the crowd outside the church in his popemobile and later on foot. “Viva il papa,” or “Long live the pope,” they shouted in Italian.
Later, Francis celebrated a Mass dedicated to young people in Bangkok’s Cathedral of the Assumption. He urged them to look to the future, firmly rooted in their faith.
“Dear young people, you are a new generation, with new hopes, dreams and questions, and surely some doubts as well,” he said. “I urge you to maintain your joy and to look to the future with confidence.”
It was the first time in a generation that Thais have seen a pope up close, after St. John Paul II became the first pope to visit Thailand in 1984. And despite the relatively small number of Catholics in Thailand — some 400,000 in a country of 65 million — his reception has been remarkably enthusiastic and warm.
“It’s been 35 years so everyone is so very happy,” said Tuangsin Pureepaswong, a 60-year-old research engineer from Rayong province. “May the Holy Father pray to God for us all.”
Pornnutcha Kruprasert, a 14-year-old training to be a nun from southern Prachuap Khiri Khan province, said she was “excited and delighted” to see the pope.
“The pope always has good thoughts for all youths,” she said cheerfully. “We can bring his teachings into real life.”