Journey to Peace Village

Sunday I had a very interesting experience attending a Catholic Church in Phuket. My motobike driver had trouble finding it, and I actually had to hire a second driver who took me to the Church of the Assumption.

It is a very nice little church of adobe white brick. I came in time to catch the end of the mass in Thai. The church is run by the Stigmatine Fathers, which is an order that I had never heard of before. It turns out they are an order that was founded in 1816 in Verona, Italy by St. Gaspar Bertoni. For more information, see their website:

http://www.estigmatinos.com.br/

At the end of the Thai mass, I received a Chinese New Year's blessing from the Director General of the order,who happened to be in town as part of a worldwide tour of the provinces. He gave me an orange (traditional during Chinese New Year) and I said "grazi." So here I am an American in a Thai Church receiving a blessing from an Italian priest. The English mass which followed was a tremendous multicultural experience. Assumption Church has a great choir which performed a beautiful guitar mass. The people attending included Thais, Filipinos, Koreans, Italians, Germans and English speaking people from Australia and, of course, the USA. A wonderful experience!

Labels: Catholic Church, Christianity, religion and culture, Thailand