Bernardo Brown On How Sri Lankan Migrant Workers Play Missionary Roles

September 27, 2022251 views0

Bernardo Brown On How Sri Lankan Migrant Workers Play Missionary Roles

2022-09-27T10:04:03+01:00

By Church News

Dr Bernardo Brown teaches Anthropology at the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan and his research revolves around migration and religious practices among Sri Lankan Catholics.In 2018, he co-edited with Brenda Yeoh a book, “Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility.” Articles in the book speak about Baptist missionaries from India’s Nagaland region going to China, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.In this interview with the media, he speaks on how Sri Lankan migrant workers play missionary roles in Italy.What brought you to study Sri Lankan Catholics?As a graduate student, I had no connection with Asia. I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and moved to New York City for my master’s studies. There I became interested in migration and was working mostly with undocumented migrants from Latin America, who were living and working in the US.I was also exploring ways to do research on migration elsewhere than regions known to me. I was looking at countries where I was still interested in migration, countries with large numbers of migrant workers. First, I thought of the Philippines. But later for several reasons, Sri Lanka became my choice.Even though migration is very important in Latin America, the numbers were small compared to Sri Lanka. Some 3 million of Sri Lanka’s 20 million people — that’s some 15 percent of the population — were living and working as migrants. These migrant workers — most temporary workers in the Middle East and many of them women — are the number one source of the country’s foreign exchange income.There were several researchers already working on domestic workers in the Middle East and some of the problems they face. I was looking for something new, and all of a sudden I found something that I kind of got connected to. It was the Catholic community of Sri Lanka, of which I was mostly unaware.But it’s a large community of some 1.5 million Christians, some seven percent of the population. They are highly concentrated in what is called the Catholic belt of Sri Lanka to the north of Colombo for approximately 200 kilometres. You have an area of Catholic villages there, one next to the other, where the population is 90 percent Catholic in any of these villages.A lot of these people have been travelling to Italy for work. So, this is kind of an unusual case of transnational migration in Sri Lanka.Could you introduce us to your contribution to Sri Lankan Catholics in Italy?As I said before, my research was primarily about migration and then I discovered this Catholic community. I became interested in it because I could relate to my own background, origins, and things I was familiar with. For example, I was surprised to see the architecture of these schools and the uniforms of the children in school, which was similar to what you would find in some small provincial towns in Argentina.The Sri Lankan Catholic church has a chaplaincy in Italy and some 20 to 30 Sri Lankan priests are permanently affiliated with it. There are also other Sri Lankan priests, who are not affiliated with the chaplaincy but live in Italy for their studies or different appointments. Their religious congregations are also working for the community. I would say, at any given time least 50 Sri Lankan Catholic priests are in Italy.The Catholic directory of Sri Lanka lists 12 dioceses and a Chaplaincy in Italy, with a whole section giving details of the chaplaincy. Many of these priests were going to Italy just to work for the Sri Lankan community. However, part of their work was also to help local parish priests, who are mostly aged over 60.So, we have these 35-year-old or so, young, energetic Sri Lankan priests, giving a hand in these parishes. These young priests are trained for work in lively parishes and busy parish life. They are used to working with the laity. But when they come to Italy, they sometimes found themselves having lots of free time.The local Italians were generally fond of these very energetic priests doing parish work. The parishioners would often complain that European priests were more engaged with organizing trade unions, environmental activism, or scholarly work, and not so much dedicated to being parish priests.ALSO READ Claude King Shares Faith Journey