By Emilie Ng
GHETTO priest and founder of Jamaica’s fastest growing religious community Fr Richard Ho Lung told Brisbane Catholics last week true happiness is found in the poor.
The founder of the Missionaries of the Poor visited Australia for the first time, accompanied by fellow MOP priests Fr Henry Lozano and Philippines mission leader Fr Ambrose Kulandairaj, and the reggae priest’s musical director Wynton Williams.
The former Jesuit priest born in Jamaica to Chinese migrant parents founded the Missionaries of the Poor in 1982 following a Christian identity crisis.
“I just kept seeing this spectre of deep suffering in the streets, people crawling in the streets, begging, sleeping,” Fr Ho Lung said.
“And I found myself going past them as I had to go to the university to teach and so forth, realising in fact that not only was I not being a good priest but I was not even being a good Christian.”
When a government-operated home for the poor burnt down, killing 155 women, Fr Ho Lung realised he was “a hypocrite”.
“At Eventide, 155 women were burnt to death, and there I was, going to the university to teach and telling people about it but not doing anything,” he said.
“I said this is really not acceptable to God nor to myself.
“I realise the doing of theology, or doing of the Word, or the embodiment of the Word of Christ was absolutely necessary in our times otherwise we were all basically hypocrites.”
After witnessing firsthand society’s incredible negligence of the poor, Fr Ho Lung asked God to take away everything in his life.
With two other men and with no money, he opened a house for the homeless and disabled poor in the notorious ghettos in Jamaica’s capital, Kingston.
Fr Ho Lung said living with the poor and was when he found his Christianity and realised Jesus was in the outcast and forgotten.
Today the Missionaries of the Poor have 550 young brothers and have added 25 women into the Missionaries of the Poor Sisters, also founded by Fr Ho Lung.
The majority of brothers, priests and sisters are from the Philippines, India and Africa.
Lay associates Tina and Trevor Lambkin invited Fr Ho Lung to Brisbane, and the ghetto priest extended the trip to visit Toowoomba, Ingham, Sydney and Melbourne.
Fr Ho Lung topped off his Brisbane visit meeting the city’s homeless at Blind Eye Ministries, a Catholic grassroots drop-in centre for the poor.
He said he hoped to visit Australian prisoners, detention centres and asylum seekers during his trip.
Read Fr Richard Ho Lung’s People story in The Catholic Leader’s July 26 edition.
