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L Fr Christian Fini, above with David Rush, and Right, background image of St Eugene.
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Recent guest speaker Father Christian Fini is soon to be principal at Mazennod College in Mulgrave. Christian is a member of the French originating Roman Catholic order of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. He explained how about 200 years ago that the order evolved from the exploits of the son, Eugene de Mazenod, of a French nobleman. Ultimately St Eugene, he devoted his life to the poor. Contact with impoverished youth and prisoners of war inspired St Eugene to devote himself to work with forgotten people.
Expressed in modern terms the Order seeks to preserve the “dignity of the human person” in the course of its benevolent work with poor and disadvantaged. Although small in number say 4,000 it has missions and a presence Australia wide, and worldwide. Christian’s past roles in administering aspects of the Order’s charitable work were explained. A remarkable point was that the sheer leanness and efficiency of such roles meant that about 90% of any charity dollar received was directly employed.
The recently established missions in China, first in Hong Kong and from the year 2000 Beijing, are relevant to us. Mingled with fascinating stories of the Chinese Government’s pragmatic tolerance of underground churches of all denominations working in parallel with the official church, we heard of the problems China faced with the mass uncontrolled internal migration of adult workers to the cities and the effective part, or full, “orphaning” of their young children.
The Oblates had responded by creating baby homes, child care and school facilities in Beijing. Christian's address centred on a connection which two HRC members David Rush and Robert Ball had initiated for our club’s support of one arm of the Order’s mission in China, namely a specific school project in Beijing. Christian, and David told of, and showed photos of the school and its operation, complete with some delightful young Chinese.
Robert Ball has collated material, including images of himself and David actually on site in China at the school.
Audience questions noted that HRC commenced its support in 2014, up to 40 children attend the school, and there are an amazing 250 plus million of such “internal migrants ” in China.
