Chanthagon Orphanage and Shrine

Kitchen and dining area for Chanthagon Orphange















Pilgrims at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary















Sisters and the driver at the Shrine

The bathing and washing place for the boys.

Chanthagon is a Catholic village on the outskirts of Mandalay. There is a big Catholic Shrine there where many of the Burmese Catholics go especially on the feast of the Holy Rosary October the 7th. It has become a shrine to Our Lady because of an unusual incident that occurred. During one of the many religious persecutions against the Catholics some of the villagers buried a statue of Our Lady to try and protect it against vandalism. The villagers were driven away to another area and for many years the statue was forgotten about, until a Buddhist Lady had a dream about it. She went and told the local Catholic priest about this dream and where the statue was. So they went to Chanthagon to try to find it but they could not. They told the woman that there was nothing there but she insisted that she had been told where it was. They went back again with the woman and she told them exactly where to dig and lo and behold, that is where they found the statue standing upright, unmarked and in a niche. It has now become a Marian Shrine attracting thousands of pilgrims. The La Salette fathers Fr Jerome Fr David and Fr Philip look after the Shrine. They were very busy with the preparation for the festival but Father Jerome gave up some of his time to show us the newly built orphanage which was run by some of the brothers.

The orphanage was formally St Peter’s for boys age two to eighteen the one in Anamapura which we had previously sponsored. The Mandalay diocese had asked for it to be moved from there to Chanthagon for logistic reasons (i.e. to keep the boys away from the girls). The diocese paid for the ground and the building and staffed it with a couple of religious brothers but could not afford to fully maintain it. I had gone there with the intention of giving them some money so that they could buy some bikes so that some of the older children could get to the local school which was some four miles away. However somebody had already donated four bikes and Father Jerome asked Br Augustine what was really needed. He said that first and foremost they needed mosquito nets as they only had one between thirty six boys. They also needed blankets as they only had a couple, but what they needed most was electricity. They had a small generator but it was only enough for a couple of lights and a television. Fr Jerome said what was needed was electric cable, wire, lights, plugs, poles for the wire and connector meter and someone to connect it all. The Marian shrine had a big government generator just outside its walls and they could make a connection there. I agreed to that but I wanted the sisters to control the money so that it would be spent on what we specified. We all went to measure the distance from the shrine to the orphanage. Fr Jerome thought it would be less than a hundred meters which I thought was way off the mark. It turned out to be two hundred and fifty which had to be double there and back. We then had to work out how much this would all work out to. The final figure was 15 lacs of chats 1,500,000 I think. I gave them the go-ahead and I asked one of the sisters and the driver to organise the purchase of the items.

After this we started to go back to the convent in Mandalay. Another hour of torture not only to my body but also to my senses. We stopped after a few miles to meet one of sister Geraldine's favourite orphans who had left the orphanage and was now a cook in one of the local restaurants. The story about Yang is one of those that pull at your heart strings. One day in the market a young girl who was not a catholic but had been taught by the sisters was working on a stall when there was a big commotion by the drains near her. She went over to see what all the fuss was about, and there she saw a newly born baby that had been abandoned. She ran to the convent and told the sisters that they had to come because no one would take responsibility for the baby’s plight. The sisters came, took the baby in and nutured it and the baby has grown to be a young man who is very thankful to the sisters and now is engaged to be married. And he looks on Sr Geraldine as his mother and she as one of her favourite sons. In this restaurant which is owned by a local Catholic man there are four workers who all originated from St Peter’s orphanage.