Ho Lung still holding on … Missionaries of the Poor founder pleads for more care for Jamaica’s less fortunate
Published:Sunday | September 1, 2019 | 12:00 AMCorey Robinson - Staff Reporter
Less than three weeks before his 80th birthday, Father Richard Ho Lung is not allowing recent tragic events to daunt his passion for caring for the needy. The founder of the Missionaries of the Poor is pleading for greater charity towards Jamaica’s poorest, at the same time hoping that the “brothers” will carry on his legacy.
Last Wednesday, a soft-handed, soft-spoken, and broken-hearted Ho Lung met with The Sunday Gleaner at the missionaries’ North Street, Kingston, headquarters, after a fire levelled a tenement yard and the adjoining Good Shepherd Home, leaving more than two dozen residents and at least 60 wards at the shelter homeless and hopeless.
Ho Lung stood with the victims as the firefighters battled the blaze at Fleet and Tower streets about 10:30 p.m.
Hours after, his humble frame shook as he recounted their horror the night before.
WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO OUR PEOPLE?
Food items, bedding, and furniture were scorched as an office and chapel inside Good Shepherd burned while next door, residents of the levelled tenement yard looked on brokenly at charred appliances, furniture, and back-to-school items purchased days before.
“We almost have like a fatherless nation, like a people without a shepherd. They don’t know where to go and what to do with their lives,” said Ho Lung, speaking of the hundreds of disabled, mentally challenged, and HIV/AIDS-afflicted wards in care at the missionaries’ eight facilities.
“I know that every day for the last 40 years they have been taken care of. We have buried many; we’ve built our own little coffins, and so forth,” he shared.
Looking around, he grieved: “Where are our people going to go? Where are they going to live? All these people that got burned out. They look at the brothers as their brothers, and they look at me as their father, but what is going to happen to our people?”
On Wednesday night, the humanitarian fed, bathed, and calmed anxious fire victims – tasks done daily by brothers and other volunteers of Missionaries of the Poor – an international monastic order based in Kingston – some of whom have travelled half-way across the world to give service.
Ho Lung, who celebrates his birthday on September 17, shared, “Next month, I will be eighty years old, and I pray to God that the brothers can take over.”
WE CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH
The Catholic priest said his shelters are filled, but his desire is to assist as many Jamaicans as he can in critical need of care and protection.
Although the missionaries have suffered their share of tragedies over the years – including the murder of brothers Suresh Barwa and Marco Las Puña in 2005, thefts, and break-ins – their commitment to the people is steadfast.
“But we can only do so much. The nation has got to have the will to take care of the poor. A nation is really defined by the way it takes care of the least in the society, not by the way you take care of the richest. The rich are always going to be taken care of,” he stressed.
“I’m talking about serious charity or responsibility for our brothers and sisters.”