As of this morning Damó Chuor, born in 1984, is the first Cambodian Jesuit priest in history.
Although there are already about ten brilliant and generous diocesan priests, and three other deacons will be ordained as priests for the apostolic vicariate of Phnom Penh on 23 September, Damó is the first Cambodian to join the Society of Jesus.
The Jesuits have been present in Cambodia since the early 1990s, massively engaged with the Jesuits Refugee Service and at the service of the apostolic prefecture of Battambang.
I was gifted the grace of meeting Damó more than twenty years ago at his parish of origin in the city of Kompong Cham, seat of the homonymous apostolic prefecture, while I was still studying the Khmer language. Since then, although far apart due to different life commitments, we have been in constant contact.
When I was sent to Prey Veng, my first mission, I was fortunate enough to have Damó volunteer on weekends while studying at the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh, but it was only after graduating in 2006 that he decided to come to Prey Veng full time to support my missionary adventure.
I thought that with the end of his studies he would have taken another path, another career. In fact, his degree course, being bilingual (Khmer and French), was considered prestigious because it prepared the best students for a possible continuation of their studies in France.
And when, on the last weekend before the end of the academic year, I confided in him the fear of losing him, he said to me: "Don't worry father, we'll be togther again". So, together with a classmate, he came to Prey Veng and stayed there until 2012 to then enter the Jesuit novitiate in Quezon City in the Philippines.
About ten years of formation would follow at the Theological University of Manila, until a few months ago. In 2014 he made his first vows and then on, up to today's priestly ordination, through the laying on of hands of Msgr. Olivier Schmitthaeusler, apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh, in the presence of Msgr. Kike Figaredo, apostolic prefect of Battambang, by Msgr. Pierre Suon Hangly, apostolic prefect of Kompong Cham, of 75 priests (and about fifteen Buddhist monks) with 1500 faithful, in the city of Battambang.
Well, it was the grace of friendship with Damó that filled my life with meaning and work in those years and for all the years to come. A pure gift from God, Damó had received Baptism in 2000, at the age of sixteen.
The reasons that led him to ask to become a Christian are soon explained, the humility and modesty of Jesus, the Son of God who makes his divinity coincide with his humanity, the closeness of the Church to simple people, the care for poor and for the least.
For this reason, in the years spent in Prey Veng, it was not at all difficult to engage Damó in impossible adventures in order to reach the most distant villages and there organize what we then called "mobile libraries".
He loaded himself with books and set off on a motorbike for 40-50 kilometers of dirt road in order to reach those villages that we had identified as suitable places to gather the children and teach them to read and to make those books paths for a possible future. Then he returned home satisfied, with the poet's certainty that he had "crossed fields that were not part of earthly estates" (P. Kavanagh, Collected Poems, London 1964, p. 29).
It wasn't just these vicissitudes that marked Damó's passage to Prey Veng. After a few years of work and kilometers of road through villages and marshes, we began to dream of our own school where care for the pupils and a passion for knowledge could give flavor to our and their lives.
Thus it was that Damó literally put his name and face into the construction of our first school, a small provincial high school that would soon become famous and over the years would educate hundreds of young people.
Indeed, a few years later, some alumni of this first school would have made possible the creation of a second, then a third, then a fourth school, but all this would not have happened without that first daring and success of his.
Probably, this passion of his for education and for the school as a vital environment - I have written elsewhere about the relationship between the scholastic institution and the monastic one - is also the reason that brought him closer to the Jesuits.
The figure of Fr. Ashley Evans SJ, in particular, Irish like the poet mentioned above, and a Jesuit, was equally decisive in Damó's discernment. I like to remember my friend Fr. Ashley because, although he is no longer physically in Cambodia, he has spent his best energies for this country and its school system.
During the ordination celebration, after the imposition of hands, Damó asked me to vest him in priestly robes. In particular, the chasuble which traditionally has the purpose of covering the priest with Christ himself or better, with the "yoke of Christ" and making him an alter Christus. This meaning can be deduced from the prayer once recited by priests while putting on the chasuble: Domine, qui dixisti: Iugum meum suave est, et onus meum leve: fac, ut istud porta sic valeam, quod consequar tuam gratiam. Amen - Lord, you who said "My yoke is easy and my load light", grant that I can bear it to deserve your grace.
Even more according to the etymology, the meaning of the word càsŭla refers to hovel, small house or hut. Putting on the chasuble and therefore of Christ means making Him your roof, your home, your abode. As it is for every priest, it is for Damó. We priests do not have a family of our own… You or Christ are our home, our abode, our dress, our food… You, or Christ, are our desire.
Thank you Damó. Working with you has made this land, and the school(s) you built, a home: for me, for many. Now that you are a priest, it is I who ask you for a blessing so that by putting on that chasuble every day, celebrating, I can always feel at home within.