Patrick Yei
365 TESTIMONIES OF HOSPITALITY | ||
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Brother |
Papua New Guinea |
Patrick Yei |
I am a Brother of the Provincial Delegation of Papua New Guinea. As a young Papua New Guinean my vocation to Hospitality was confirmed by seeing how the Brothers respond to the needs of the most abandoned members of society. A good example of that for me is the ministry in Wewak that I take part in every Sunday. Wewak is a big town on the north-east coast of Papua New Guinea. There is a big prison there and two of us Brothers go to the prison every Sunday to give some pastoral care to the prisoners. It is very rare for us to be able to get a priest to say Mass. So we conduct a prayer session for the prisoners. It makes me sad to see the young prisoners under guard come into the chapel. A lot of their humanity has been taken from them by life in captivity. The chapel is just an open shed with a tin roof but no walls. It has an altar and a lectern. We decorate the chapel with flowers and have guitars for the singing. We also have a big banner for the chapel that carries the image of Saint Maximillian Kolbe. He is the patron of our ministry. The prisoners like his story. We sometimes tell them that our founder also spent some of his life locked up at Granada but that that did not stop him helping his fellow inmates who were sick or needy.