Battambang, Cambodia: Educating the Poor and Marginalised
“Today is an important day as Providence sisters have made progress [in a project] which had been put on hold for a long time,” Sister Anne Lucie Kim Nga, superior of the Sisters of Providence in Cambodia, said during the ceremony on May 4.
The school draws support from the Catholic bishops of Phnom Penh and Battambang as well as from the governor of Kampong Chhnang province.
Sister Nga noted that before civil war engulfed Cambodia from 1967 to 1975, Providence nuns ran several large schools in Phnom Penh, Kep and Kampot provinces. The war and consequent genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge dismantled everything.
All schools were either closed or destroyed as Catholic missionaries were forced to flee the country to escape persecution by the ultra-Maoist regime. Several nuns, including local and foreign missionaries, were killed by communist forces.
Nuns and other missionaries returned after the end of the war and the overthrow of Pol Pot’s brutal regime.
“The school is small but has been built with God’s plan to support the children of poor families,” Sister Nga said.
She thanked generous donors and Bishop Enrique Figaredo Alvargonzález, the apostolic prefect of Battambang, for supporting the nuns to fulfill their mission through the school.
Source: UCANews
