Ho Lung’s heartache

Father Richard Ho Lung, the renowned founder of the Catholic-based Christian organisation, Missionaries of the Poor, has returned to Jamaica after three and a half years to find a nation he believes has lost sight of God and is on a pathway to depravity that has been influenced by international forces.

Ho Lung, who spoke with The Gleaner yesterday after only recently being able to come back to the island because COVID restrictions kept him in Manila, Philippines, says his homeland has changed and all for the worse.

“The society I think is being misled by international forces. Abortion is a major problem; gender identity is a major issue. Transvestites, homosexuality, lesbian, these matters I think are confusing our people. And what is happening is that people are angry. They no longer have a clear mind that, ‘Okay, this is the work of the Lord, this is the way of the Lord and that we are a Christian country,” Ho Lung said.

The Catholic clergyman spoke about how, in his eyes, Jamaicans had lost their way.

“I see a sort of cruelty or hardness that is not Jamaican, it is not Jamaican. We mustn’t go there because of the violence that we see in the movies or the internet. I really do worry about that, the cruelty, and I think part of it is the loss of God. The loss of God I think is coming from foreign values. We are not allowed to be ourselves,” he insisted.

DONE BY LAW

According to Ho Lung, among the difficulties being experienced by the brothers who comprise the Missionaries of the Poor in the execution of their duties is that they are not now allowed to collect people from off the streets in order to assist them but must instead alert the authorities who will dictate how cases should be handled.

“Everything is being done clinically and professionally, by law. It’s coming from people like World Health (Organization), the United Nations, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), they have imposed a lot on Jamaica. It is true, if you want to get money in this country for schools, for hospitals, for streets or whatever. If you want that, you got to sign the dotted line. We will allow for this that and that, including the LGBTQ ...,” he charged.

Over the years, through the many musical productions put on by Father Ho Lung and Friends, he and his team have engaged in a form of evangelism, given Jamaicans’ love of music. However, the clergyman pointed, much of today’s entertainment is too frivolous and playful and he said he believed this was having an adverse effect on the minds of young people.

“We really think that there is a problem in the society of dealing with values. Young people don’t seem to know right and wrong nowadays.”

As he prepares to step away from day-to-day operations of the organisation he founded in the early 1980s, Ho Lung reminisced on how even their operational activities are being dictated to by external forces.

DICTATED BY EXTERNAL FORCES

“In the earlier days, we didn’t have people, for instance, telling us how to run places. Now they are telling us how to run the places. We wanted to do this work for our country. We didn’t want to burden the Government with having to pay us a stipend,” he said.

“We just took in faith and we did a wonderful job. Now we hearing, and we know this is coming from international forces. The brothers took care of the people – their medical needs and all their various needs. Now we are being forced to employ social workers and nurses, which is a fairly heavy burden, believe me, and it all happened like that (snapping his fingers). It’s happened in India, Philippines, Africa, Haiti, all these countries. Suddenly we are burdened with this, whereas in the past, the brothers did the work in our own way. Now we have the interference of people coming in with different ideas and we don’t like it.”

One of these restrictions prevents the brothers from taking people off the streets, even if they have been injured, as they used to.

“Now, the social service will tell you you cannot do that,” Ho Lung said as he continued to speak of the restrictions the brothers have had to face in countries around the world.

“First of all, the intervention has to be authorised, you have to know where the person came from – even if they are dying on the street. It started in countries like Canada and the United States where you can’t touch a person, better for them to die on the street.”

Despite Ho Lung’s concerns, however, Dr Christopher Tufton, minister of health and wellness, told The Gleaner he was unaware of any new policies in Jamaica that would lead to the concerns being expressed by the leader of the Missionaries of the Poor.

christopher.serju@gleanerjm.com