A Change of Guard

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Tuesday 30 November 2010

The relic of Don Bosco will cross the former Khmer refugee camps this Thursday

Don Bosco workshop in Sihanoukville prison (right) and
Don Bosco Childrens' Fund help Khmer children (below).

By Albeiro Rodas
Sihanoukville

Last November 17 a curious guest arrived by plane from Seoul to Bangkok and visited all the Don Bosco schools in the Southeast Asian kingdom where the Salesian educational community has been working for underprivileged children and youth since the 1930s. It was a transparent urn showing a sleepy priest with a rather calm face and containing the relic of Don Bosco, who died in Turin, Italy on January 31, 1888. Thousands of young people from different places of Thailand went to see, touch, sing and celebrate the coming of the urn in its long journey by the five continents until 2015, the date that will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Bosco from a family of peasants in a then impoverished north of Italy.

December 2 the urn with the relic of the renowned 19th century educator will leave Thailand to enter Cambodia. The urn will cross a very meaningful place in its journey: the former refugee camps along the Thai border where Don Bosco came to answer the urgent needs of children and youth in the troublesome decade of the 1980s. The already extinct six technical schools in sites 2, 8, Sok Sann and B are in the memory of several men and women who were at the time children and youth and got the opportunity to learn something while waiting the end of the war.

After crossing the Aranyaprathet - Poipet International gate, the relic will travel all the Thursday by seven provinces of Cambodia, from west to Phnom Penh, stopping for two hours in Battambang where the relic will be greeted by the Don Bosco educational communities, religious and official authorities. That same day, near one thousand students, teachers and past pupils will travel from Sihanoukville to the capital for the program that will last until Saturday, when the relic will travel back to Bangkok and from there to Manila in its world journey.

A movie of Don Bosco was doubled in Khmer language by the Don Bosco Audiovisual Center and it will be shown in the school on Thursday evening. On December 3 the Cambodian authorities, leaded by Im Sethy, Minister of Education, Youth and Sport, will pay a visit to the compound of the Don Bosco Technical School in the Phnom Penh Themy District where the relic will be honored.

Ask the program in English or Khmer to Kru Sambo - socialcomm@donboscosihanoukville.org
Notice: This is an official press release to the Cambodian media from donboscokhmer.org. It can be published, completed, modified or ignore. If you do not want to get updates about this issue in your email, feel free to reply with 'please remove me from your contact list' You can contact DBFC for interviews or more information by calling 097 96 75 042 (Albeiro Rodas)

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