– Marco Carvalho
The last Catholic temple to be built in Macao was inaugurated two decades ago. The 20th anniversary was celebrated on Wednesday exactly to the day with a Mass presided over by Bishop Stephen Lee, during which a dozen children received the Holy Communion for the first time and six others were administered Confirmation.
“What matters the most is not so much to celebrate the last twenty years, but to prepare for the future and that’s what we are trying to do,” father Manuel Machado told O Clarim. “At the anniversary Mass we conducted Wednesday night, we celebrated the First Communion of a few children and we also had some young people who were confirmed. This is the result of the work we have been conducting, an effort that has allowed us to reap some fruits in terms of evangelization. This year, for example, we have eighty kids in catechesis,” the parish priest adds.
In addition to the celebration of the Eucharist, the anniversary of the inauguration of the Church of St Joseph the Worker was also commemorated around the table, in a dinner whose main purpose was to bring the community together around an ideal of faith: “Usually, after the Eucharist, we would go to the church’s hall, where we had a very simple get-together. As this year we were celebrating a landmark anniversary, it was decided that we would go to a restaurant in order to make the celebration a bit more beautiful and special. The various groups that collaborate with the Church expressed their joy through songs and other artistic performances,” the Comboni priest recounted. ” It was important to have the moment of celebration and then this opportunity to fraternize. It is important to bring the people together,” admits Manuel Machado, who is also the chancellor of the Diocese of Macau.
Erected in the heart of the Iao Hon district, the Church of St Joseph the Worker was built in 1998 and inaugurated on May 1, 1999, little more than half a year before the return of Macau to Chinese sovereignty. An architecturally bold project, the side of the church facing the People’s Republic of China is reminiscent of two open arms, a detail that symbolizes the Vatican’s openness to the expectations of the Chinese population and expresses, at the same time, an invitation to all those that want to know a bit more about the word of God.
Twenty years ago, the late Bishop Domingos Lam, who died in 2009, conveyed his desire to see new Catholic temples being built in Macau in the wake of the Church of St Joseph the Worker. Bishop Lam’s aspiration, recalls Manuel Machado, did not come to be: “Back then, D. Domingos Lam said that he hoped that every twenty years a new center, a church or something of the kind could be inaugurated to show that the Catholic faith was present and growing, given that there was also an increase in terms of population. At the time, this was the vision that he had,” evokes the parish priest of St Joseph the Worker.
Twenty years later, Iao Hon’s Catholic temple remains the newest Church built in the territory and the challenges that lie ahead are still significant: “Our problem – and it is something that has remained a constant during all these years – is to find a way to attract people, to bring people to us. Most of those that live near the Church only care about work and they do not have much time for other things. The number of those who seek, who participate in our initiatives is very small,” acknowledges Manuel Machado. “Our main challenge for the future is to maintain an active presence here, our doors always open, so that people who have an interest and want to know more about our work can do so. It is up to us to welcome them in the best possible way,” the Chancellor of the Diocese of Macau said.
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