Fr. Olivier Schmitthaeusler
In 1999, he was celebrating Mass at Svay Pak, a settlement on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh. Later he was the Initiator of an agricultural education program in Takeo Province. Now Fr. Oliver Schmitthaeusler, a 39-year-old priest from Alsace will be ordained bishop of Phnom Penh in March.
Out on the road, driving his Honda CRV, Fr. Olivier brakes suddenly to avoid a dog lying beside the road. “My car has so much dust that one cannot even see it,” he smiles. On the windshield, the car has a VIP pass provided by the family of one of the parishioners.
Every week, he commutes between Phnom Penh and Takeo where last October he established the Institute of St. Paul, a large modern school which accommodates 120 students learning agriculture and 80 students studying computers.
“On the day the Prime Minister signed the sub-decree recognizing the Institute,” says Fr. Olivier, “Pope Benedict XVI announced my nomination as a bishop.” That means, in the months ahead, in addition to the travel between Phnom Penh and Takeo, his travels will extend throughout the vicariate which includes seven provinces plus the city of Phnom Penh. And it means he must abandon his little house equipped with a solar panel in Takeo, his garden, and the quiet of his rural parish to move to the Bishop’s House in Phnom Penh.
At 39, Fr. Olivier Schmitthaeusler will become, on March 20, the third-youngest bishop in the world. Born in Strasbourg, the eldest child in a family of four, he entered the seminary where he obtained his bachelor’s degree. Starting in 1991, he worked in Osaka, Japan, and then in 1998, just after he was ordained, he was sent to Cambodia. After a year of language study, he was able to celebrate Mass in Khmer.
He worked in Svay Pak (or “Kilometer 11”), an area on the outskirts of Phnom Penh known for its brothels. When he first arrived at the church there on his motorbike, the girls took him to be a client. He said mass in Svay Pak using a PA system which took his voice beyond the walls of church through loudspeakers. Of this period, Fr. Olivier does not say much, except that the Catholic community there was “very dynamic.”
His attention was quickly brought to what is now the parish of Chom Kartieng in the province of Takeo. ”There was not even one baptized person there. But one man, who had a cousin in the seminary, one day sold a cow to buy a motorcycle so he could go all the way to Phnom Penh to study catechism. It was a six-hour round trip for him to do that.”
Today, the Catholic community of that village has 97 people. Fr. Olivier supports the conversions there. “It is a long road leading to conversion. The villagers must participate in three years of activities in the parish before baptism, and then another two years after baptism.”
At Chom Kartieng, a baby named Olivier honors the strong personality of the priest responsible for the rapid development of the community. A young Christian woman greets Fr. Olivier with her baby in her arms. She named him Olivier after the priest.
Proselytism? The priest does not like the word. ”It has a negative connotation…. But I am not ashamed to announce the gospel. In the school, we offer meals to students and there is a prayer before the meal. They pray for what they want…. At the school a chapel has been set up which is prominent without being dominant. At Christmas, we explain the meaning of the celebrations we organize. An offer is made, but the people are free how to respond.”
On Fridays, when he celebrates Mass with a group of thirty students, Fr. Olivier asks, while preparing the hosts, how many students want to receive communion. Only about twenty of them raise their hands. ”Those who are not Catholics, they just come to see,” he says. While avoiding direct proselytizing, he wants to leave open the possibility for sincere conversions.
This school program, which can accommodate up to 6000 students, is intended to diversify training opportunities. The Royal School of Agriculture has already awarded diplomas to students from the St. Paul school program. The library of the Institute is among the six largest in the country, and the students can apply their knowledge in 70 hectares of fields near Kep where they grow rice, fruit trees, and sweet potatoes. These major initiatives have been funded with the assistance of a donor in Singapore, met during a tour to raise funds.
On the stairway in the school is a placard listing the values of the institute: Responsibility, humanity, solidarity. In the headmaster’s office, a portrait of King Norodom Sihanomi hangs next to a large painting of St. Francis. Outside, the students play soccer, each wearing a jersey of the national team of France. In the rear of the grounds is a large yellow and red stupa surmounted by a cross. “Here is where I will be buried,” says Fr. Olivier. For the present, it contains the ashes of only one person, the first Christian in the parish to have died.
Relations with the Buddhists are good, Fr. Olivier affirms. ”We make regular visits to their ceremonies … We have many contacts with the monks.” Dialogue between the two religions, however, remains ”a dialogue of life,” informal and rarely touching on matters of faith. ”At Christmas, we went with the Buddhists to the prison in Kampot to visit the prisoners,” he says. “That allowed a joint local religious response to occur.”
As bishop, Fr. Olivier wants to work to strengthen interfaith dialogue. “Non-Christians here rarely make the distinction between Catholics and others,” he noted. And what he called the ‘religion of Jesus’ is in general perceived negatively. It is often regarded as the religion of foreigners or as a belief that does not respect the ancestors.” Another perception attached to Catholicism is that it is the religion of Vietnam. To avoid stigmatization, the Vietnamese Catholics are urged by the Church to learn Khmer and to integrate into Cambodia society. At the annual Epiphany gathering of church leaders, the future bishop expressed the hope that the Church “continue to be a sign of communion, especially between the Cambodian and Vietnamese communities. In the history of Cambodia, Christians have often been targeted because they represented the “enemy” Vietnamese population.
The persecutions against Christians under the Democratic Kampuchea regime remain a subject of debate. “Christians suffered as Christians under the Khmer Rouge, and also during the Vietnam period,” says Fr. Olivier. “But in the current process, this is a very political issue.” The future bishop also plans to organize a seminar on historical memory. He says: “If we do not preserve that now, in thirty years there will be nothing left.”
Between March and August, Fr. Olivier will be the Coadjutor Bishop to Bishop Emile Destombes. In August, Bishop Emile turns 75 , the age of mandatory retirement.
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