Compassion of youth in Laos

From 6 to 9 December 2025, Minister General, Br. Massimo Fusarelli, and the General Definitor for Asia-Oceania, Br. John Wong, visited the OFM Fraternity of St Anthony in Laos, under the Province of St Francis in Vietnam. They were accompanied by the Minister Provincial, Br. John of God Nguyen Phuoc, and Br. Peter Binh as translator. This visit offered the visitors the opportunity to get to know more closely a young and vibrant reality, which seeks to live the Franciscan charism with simplicity, joy, and deep compassion.

The fraternity in Laos is composed of five solemnly professed friars and one temporarily professed friar on missionary exposure. The first missionary, Br. Joseph Huyen, arrived in Pakse in 2012, beginning the Franciscan presence in the local Apostolic Vicariate. The community was officially established three years later. It is a mission with a wide scope in a country with a small local Church: a vast territory, a population of about eight million people, 95% of whom are Buddhist and only about 1.5% of whom are Christian, with numerous Indigenous villages that are isolated and lack essential services.

In this context, the friars try to inculturate themselves in the local reality and respond to the concrete needs of the people. Many areas lack clean water, proper schooling, and basic health services. Parents often struggle to support the education of their children and may lack the means or opportunity to send them to school. For this reason, the friars collaborate with international volunteers, NGOs, and educational institutions to carry forward social and formative projects: boarding houses for rural students, tutoring programs and English classes, training of catechists for remote villages, health and clean-water programs, construction of formation and worship facilities, and initiatives for future sustainability.

A particularly meaningful testimony of the friars’ mission is the growth of the young people who have been accompanied by them over the years. Among these, three stories stand out, showing how compassion and fraternal care can transform lives.

The first is Luke Khan, 29, from the village of Huaoy Tao. In 2018, after finishing high school, he joined the friars as a volunteer in a summer camp for children and youth. He later stayed in their boarding house in Pakse while he completed his university degree in English. In September 2024, he received a scholarship for a Leadership Formation course at the Fondacio Institute in Quezon City, Philippines. Returning to Pakse on 3 December 2025, he now collaborates with the friars in the vicariate and teaches English in the villages. “I have grown in my spiritual life,” he shared. “The community taught me to pray, to live with people from different cultures, and to take care of the children.”

The second story is that of Mark Min, 27. At seventeen, he arrived at the friars’ boarding house in Paksong to continue his studies, impossible in his home village of Kachit. In 2024, he travelled with Luke to the Philippines, where he completed the same courses in leadership and social services. Today, he plans to continue working with the young people of the Paksong boarding house, accompanying them in their human and academic growth. “I want to help develop the young people,” he said, “but at the same time, I also need to continue developing myself.”

Finally, there is Elizabeth Phaeva, 25, also from Huaoy Tao. She will leave in January 2026 for the same formation program in the Philippines, with the possibility of further formation experience in Singapore. She currently volunteers at the retreat center in Paksong and works with an NGO that distributes and explains medications in rural villages. She too hopes to return and support the mission of the friars and the growth of the local Church.

The dream of the friars in Laos is to become a stable Foundation, continuing collaboration with the Vicariate of Pakse, with their Province, and with neighboring Franciscan missions in Cambodia and Thailand. In recent years, they have also received new vocations, another sign of a living Church and a continuing Evangelical journey.

During the concluding Mass on 9 December at the parish church of Huay Peck, Br. Massimo reminded everyone: “Here we speak different languages and come from different cultures, but we know that we are one people of God. And our common language is the language of Love.”