HOLDING the hand of a neglected Jamaican child eaten by rats in a public alms house marked the beginning of Fr Richard Ho Lung’s fight to love the world’s forgotten people.
The Jamaican-born Catholic convert from Buddhism left behind “the best of education and best of opportunities” as a Jesuit priest to live in the ghettos and serve the poor more than 30 years ago.
The sight of “deep suffering in the streets” punctuated the former Jesuit and university lecturer’s early travels to work.
“People were crawling in the streets, begging, sleeping,” he said.
“I found myself going past them as I had to go to the university to teach and so forth, realising in fact not only was I not being a good priest, I was not even being a good Christian, not given the circumstances in which I saw Jamaica was declining, to become a place where there are lots of poor people.”
Jamaica’s Eventide home, a government-run home for destitute women and children housing “more rats than people” was Fr Ho Lung’s doorway into a life with just two pairs of priestly clothes and no money.
“At Eventide there were 155 women who were burnt to death, and there was I, going to the university to teach and telling people about it, but not really doing anything except to say that it was unjust,” he said.
“Then you begin to realise that the doing of theology or the doing of the Word or the embodiment of the Word of Christ was absolutely necessary in our times, otherwise we were all basically hypocrites, unless you did the work of Christ.
“I began to become more and more agitated by that, and then finally, capitulated to the Lord and found in it, oddly, the greatest joy I’d ever found, which I could not find in teaching, and preaching and other works that I was doing.”
Fr Ho Lung said he “would not survive” spiritually as a Jesuit and in 1980, at 40 years old, left the order.
With two other men, Fr Ho Lung set off with episcopal permission to start a small group called the Brothers of the Poor who “set our minds on working with the poorest”, not meaning to found a religious order.
Starting at Eventide, Fr Ho Lung collated photographs of the neglected residents and made it available to the public, with help from the Jamaican press, leading to “huge confrontations with the government”.
“When I established the book, with pictures of all these people, the government forbade it and they called me and told me I was being a traitor,” Fr Ho Lung said.
“But I knew, deep down I knew, that all this rejection, I knew that that definitely was the hand of God wanting me to be purified, so I had no fear.
“And I sensed there was a victory to be won for the poor.”
He was victorious, the government announcing to rehouse all the poor, a “sign that God was pushing me in that direction” of fighting for the poor.
Fr Richard’s next stop was the slums of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital city, where families called weak structures made of recycled cardboard and material scraps “home”.
“Each day you went down and all of them would come running out with their arms wide open and say ‘Father, Father’, or ‘Brother, Brother – look at me, you came again’,” he said.
“And they would throw their arms around you.
“And you realised that was very much like Christ in Matthew 25, ‘Welcome into my kingdom, for I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink’.
“The poor are really Christ in disguise, they are the ones who are going to be your judge.”
The slums and streets were a dumping ground for babies with Down syndrome, disfigured bodies or other disabilities, who were cast out in shame and left to die on the streets.
The disturbing sights caught Fr Ho Lung’s attention and he sought to provide a home where the dying, forgotten and abandoned could live.
“We eagerly built a first home called Faith Centre and we had quite a few Down syndrome homeless, Down syndrome cripples, old men, old women taken into our Faith Centre, named that because we had no resources, you know,” he said.
“It was an act of faith that we were taking in homeless people.
“And we also were earning no money because if you really want to attend to the poor you can’t be divided.
“And to our surprise, we were able to feed people, clothe them and so forth.
“We increased after that, and built a second home.”
The brothers witnessed miracles in the houses, which Fr Ho Lung said was a testament to the power of love.
“Miracle after miracle, people who were dying, just by the fact that the brothers love them, touch them, feed them and pray with them, their desire to live is the miracle,” he said.
“I want to live because I am loved.
“And many people who would have died, have lived.
“Miracles are really the power to love and to find in yourself something way beyond yourselves, beyond your capacities.”
Within two years almost 20 men joined, mainly from other Caribbean countries, and in 1992 the Brothers of the Poor took on a new title, the Missionaries of the Poor.
Word of the “ghetto priest” spread not only through Jamaica, but also caught the attention of Blessed Mother Teresa, to whom Fr Ho Lung is often compared, and St John Paul II.
Both saintly figures visited Fr Ho Lung and the Missionaries of the Poor and confirmed with the ghetto priest that their life “was the right life and the right work for our times”.
Today there are more than 550 brothers, the majority born in Asia, Africa or the Caribbean, setting up international missions in Jamaica, Haiti, India, Kenya, the Philippines, Uganda, the United States and Indonesia.
Work is also starting on three new mission houses in East Timor in August, with the hope Fr Ho Lung’s recent visit to Australia will provide the funds.
“How many times you know, we’ve had to struggle, including myself, to say, ‘Go to Africa, go to Uganda, Kenya’,” he said.
“‘How are you going to get money to get building on land?’ It will be provided.
“To go past practical reality to spiritual reality.
“God is in charge, His hand is there.
“As Saint Paul says, ‘I have a cloak on my back, I have bread in my hand, what else do I need’.
“We have to live a life of faith to awaken those who live purely by the practical realities of every day.
“Let them see us Christians doing that, that we had it all but we said no to it because it was not enough.
“Let the Lord work.
“The more we provide for ourselves, the less God needs to provide for us.
“And also, it is God’s poor, so they’re his special children, so they have to call upon Him each day.”
