Taiwan Today

Missionaries from afar fulfill their religious vows by offering care where it is needed.
 

“My parents found it really hard to see me leave home, become a nun and then travel so far away from them to serve in Taiwan. But when they knew I was happy here, they willingly accepted it,” said Sister Mary O Losa Anuna, an energetic woman in her early 60s. The Philippine Carmelite nun started her service in the country 32 years ago by taking care of severely disabled children with conditions like cerebral palsy at Sacred Heart Home (SHH) in the southern county of Chiayi’s Dongshi Township. The home was founded in 1990 by Swiss Jesuit priest Father Franz Burkhardt, who passed away in 2002 with an unfulfilled wish to build a second home like SHH. With assistance from Anuna, Mindao Home—after the Swiss priest’s Chinese name—opened its doors just a few kilometers away seven years later. In total the two homes have taken in about 300 children, mostly from disadvantaged families.
 

“The majority of the kids cannot speak, with some completely paralyzed and only able to express their feelings through eye contact, so it was important to be as close as a mother to each one,” Anuna said. Small in stature but with endless reserves of patience, she has spent countless days and nights feeding, bathing, massaging and, most importantly, cherishing her young charges. In one case, a doctor predicted a seriously ill seven-year-old boy at SHH would live for three years at most. Instead he lived to be 21, confirming Anuna’s belief in the power of love. “The boy felt he was loved and that extends life,” she said. Anuna has overcome significant personal challenges through her faith, such as her fear of driving, as her child patients often needed hospital visits. “Because I am short, I hardly dared sit in the front seat of a car before, but I had to learn how to drive due to the kids’ complex conditions, which often led to emergencies.” 
 

Currently, Anuna brings solace to bedridden or wheelchair-bound seniors at Anna Long Term Care Center in Chiayi’s Dalin Township. “The elderly are often cranky because they have chronic health conditions. I understand their needs and do my best to meet them with kindness and patience,” she said. 

Care Providers

Anuna is just one of many overseas missionaries pursuing their religious vocations by caring for the vulnerable in Taiwan. According to National Religion Information Network established by the Ministry of the Interior, 167 international members of religious orders have been commended for charitable work ranging from providing medical treatment to the poor to offering help to migrant workers. Of these, 101 are Catholic and the rest belong to other Christian denominations. These religious workers regularly overcome significant personal challenges in their daily lives. For example, German pastor Immanuel Scharrer, who started his overseas mission working in northern Thailand in the 1970s, learned Thai at age 28 and then started over with Mandarin when he prepared to relocate to Taiwan at 47.
 

As soon as Scharrer landed, he established a network of Thai Friendship Centers (TFC) around the country, starting with one in the northern city of Taoyuan. Twelve such centers are now in operation, allowing Thai workers meet with compatriots and take Mandarin and English classes. “Many Thais come to Taiwan to work, and I wanted to assist them as I was familiar with Thai culture,” he said. Scharrer visits the TFCs regularly to chat with drop-ins and organizes outings for Thai workers to enjoy Taiwan’s sights.
 

The pastor and his German wife   Erika Scharrer also make frequent prison visits to assist international residents who have run into trouble with the law. They both visit Taipei Prison in Taoyuan twice a week and Mrs. Scharrer visits nearby Taoyuan Women’s Prison on a weekly basis. They both address medical and other needs for overseas inmates, who are often alone in Taiwan. “In confinement, other nationalities rarely interact with local inmates or with prison authorities due to the language barrier, so we act as intermediaries,” he said. These two practical aspects of the pastor’s ministry are complemented by his role as theology lecturer at China Lutheran Seminary in northern Taiwan’s Hsinchu City.

Medical Facilities

Taking care of vulnerable sections of society is just one facet of pragmatic religious service, with another well-known part being the establishment and operation of medical facilities. The Roman Catholic Camillian order, whose iconic red cross emblazoned on members’ black cassocks became the international symbol of medical aid, started to work in Taiwan in 1952, setting up Saint Mary’s Hospital (SMH) Luodong in the northeastern county of Yilan. The area was selected because it was one of the least developed and most medically underserved localities at that time. Starting as a one-story building with 12 beds, SMH Luodong now comprises four buildings with a total of 663 beds. A second hospital was founded in 1957 in outlying Penghu County. Today SMH Luodong is among an array of medical, long-term care and educational units operated by the order in the county, including St. Camillus Center for Intellectual Disability (SCCID), St. Camillus Long-term Care Center and St. Mary’s Junior College of Medicine, Nursing and Management, all of which are in Yilan’s Sanxing Township.
 

Yu Fang-ling (俞芳苓), an Yilan native and director of SMH’s public relations department, said that three generations of her own family have received care at the hospital. “Everyone in Yilan knows SMH’s history,” she said. The first meeting with a foreign religious worker for many Yilan residents is at birth, as professional midwife Sister Germana Finotto has delivered over 30,000 babies during her time working at SMH from the 1950s through the 1990s. Prior to implementation of the country’s National Health Insurance scheme in 1995, SMH was famous for providing treatment to patients too poor to pay. As winner of 2002 Medical Dedication Award co-organized by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Legislative Yuan’s Health, Welfare and Environment Council in the group category, SMH was recognized for its successful cooperation between locals and the many dedicated Catholics who have made Taiwan their home. 

Realizing Vocations

Over the decades, about 60 priests, monks and nuns have come to Taiwan to serve at SMH. Father Ernesto Valdesolo traveled Yilan’s most remote areas to bring medical services and food from 1953 to 1995 after witnessing a patient carried bodily into SMH by family members who had walked all the way from an indigenous village deep in the mountains. Janez Janez from Slovenia, although not a member of a formal religious order, was a devout Catholic surgeon who arrived in Taiwan in the 1950s after two miraculous escapes from death, once as a refugee en route to a labor camp in war-torn Europe and then again from a death sentence meted out by communist soldiers while he was working at a hospital in China. Janez found peace in Taiwan and undertook over 80,000 operations during his 38 years at SMH. When he passed away in 1990, more than 5,000 local residents lined the streets of Luodong to pay their last respects.
 

“These missionaries provided assistance at a time when Taiwan was so impoverished that the government couldn’t,” said SMH superintendent Ma Hon-kwong (馬漢光). The growth of SMH and other medical facilities over the decades is largely due to the philanthropic belief system that forms an integral part of religious faith, with large amounts of financial support coming in from overseas congregations, particularly those in Italy. Now a daily visitor at SCCID and SMH hospice wards is Father Giuseppe Didone, a native of northern Italy’s Padua. As a result of his conversations over the years with patients, he has a trove of uplifting stories to tell about the positive spirit of those living with tuberculosis and disabilities. Didone arrived in the country at just 24 years of age in the 1960s, and his work in Taiwan enabled him to help his home country in its hour of need. At the start of the European COVID-19 outbreak, Didone made a plea to Taiwan to help Italians severely affected by the disease. This elicited an outpouring of support from Taiwan. Within a week total cash donations surpassed NT$150 million (US$5.35 million). “Local people were pleased to have an opportunity to help Italy because they’ve been truly touched by Italian Catholics working in Taiwan,” said Ma of the pandemic relief aid.
 

Camillian altruism has had a lasting effect beyond SMH, as the hospital’s local staff now actively explore assistance opportunities in countries with less developed medical services. “Foreign missionaries are an integral part of overall Taiwan services to vulnerable populations and an inspiring embodiment of the humanitarian spirit,” Ma said. The Taiwan government has also recognized these contributions by offering nationality to long-serving members of religious orders who have made the country their home.

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw