In this small town poverty is very real, fires are burnt in the house for cooking and warmth, floors are bare, the Catholic priest can only see them once a year due to persecutions of the Chinese government and the Lamas...but the people keep the church alive, they visit each other, pray in church and sing hymns to our Lord... this is only 10 minutes of the whole documentary but it is wonderful... Towering high above a mountain chain that runs along China’,s south-western border stands snow capped Mt. Meiliea - one of the eight sacred mountains of Tibet, and a gateway between Tibet and the Chinese province of Yunnan. The deep gorges of this area have imposed a physical isolation on the local inhabitants. For thousands of years, Tibetans have lived here - only rarely visited by outsiders. The earliest recorded European visitors to these secluded hills arrived in the early 19th century. They scaled mountains and crossed rivers, suffering extraordinary hardship in pursuance of a single aim: to spread Catholicism across Tibet. These French and Swiss missionaries, who crossed Tibet’,s threshold a century ago, sowed seeds of Faith that continue to bear fruit to this day. This CRTN-HKDAVC co-production documentary describes the life of one such Catholic Tibetan community in the village of Cizhong, as they struggle to live their Faith and endeavour to pass it on to the next generation. The struggle is all the more difficult for the diocese has no priest, except for a visiting priest who comes but once a year. Meanwhile catechists such as Wu Gongdi strive to maintain the church, care for the ill and lead the weekly prayers lest the Faith be lost. The film highlights Wu Gongdi’,s work and the build up to the priest’,s annual visit. The one Mass the faithful walk for hours to attend is however a bittersweet experience - for with the joy of the sacraments comes the sadness that another year must pass before the Mass will again be celebrated.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 19:43:15 +0000
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