President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) announced on April 1 that Taiwan would donate 10 million masks to nations most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was a touching decision. Special thanks should be given to the companies and engineers of the “national team” of mask producers, formed in early February, along with workers on the production lines.
Their hard work of burning the night oil for so many nights allowed the nation’s mask supply to increase to a sufficient level, and now there are enough to help other countries in need.
The mask donation demonstrates the benevolence of Taiwanese.
As Italy has thus far been one of the nations hit hardest by the pandemic, this is Taiwan’s opportunity to return past favors.
In 1952, a group of Roman Catholic priests of the Camillians order came to Taiwan and dedicated their lives to its people. The priests have been caring for Taiwanese in remote areas ever since.
Apart from establishing clinics and building hospitals on the Lanyang Plain on the underdeveloped side of the Central Mountain Range, the Camillian priests also devoted their time to the care of residents in Penghu County.
Now that their own country is suffering from the disastrous pandemic, Taiwanese can now repay the priests, who never asked for anything in return, with gratitude and warmth.
The priests and sisters of the Camillians order arrived in Taiwan one year after being dispelled from China by the Chinese Communist Party in 1951.
Inheriting the founding spirit of the order, they dedicated themselves “to the practice of works of mercy towards the sick” and “to service to the sick poor, including the plague-ridden, in their corporeal and spiritual needs.”
The Camillians started providing medical and healthcare service in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東), where they bought a single-story clinic and renamed it St Mary’s Hospital.
With the Camillians who came to the township was Slovenia-born John Janez, a skilled surgeon. He performed more than 80,000 operations in Luodong over 38 years, until his death in 1990. During much of that time, there was no blood bank in the nation, so Janez and all the Camillian priests served as the hospital’s blood donors.
Father Angero Pastro and Friar Marcello Caon of the Camillians were sent to Penghu County’s Magong, where they discovered that medical resources were even more meager than those in Yilan.
In May 1953, they established another St Mary’s Hospital — a small clinic — in Magong and began offering free services. Today that small clinic is known as St Camillus Hospital.
Two statues in memory of the medical missionaries stand in Magong today: one is of Marjorie Bly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a registered nurse, and the other is of Brother Davide Luigi Giordan of the Camillians, who hardly ever took a break and died in the clinic.
Bly and Giordan devoted their full efforts to the care of leprosy patients until the disease disappeared in the nation.
When the Camillians first arrived in Penghu, there was no proper road for traffic between Magong and Paisha Township (白沙鄉). These missionaries helped to pave the road.
In September 1953, Father Antonio Crotti was sent to Magong. Employing resources from the order, Crotti helped construct a fishing harbor on Dacang Islet (大倉島), two residential areas — Huei Ming New Village and Huei Ming Second Village — for the poor in Magong, as well as breakwaters and simple harbors for smaller boats and bamboo rafts in Xiyu Township (西嶼) and Paisha.
During the 18 years he spent in Penghu, Crotti helped build 12 harbors, numerous breakwaters along the coastline, 80 wells for irrigation and a 600m long, 5m wide pebble road in Jiangmei Village (講美) to connect small islands previously only accessible when the tide was out.
In 1968, Crotti published a book, Pescadores, isole del vento e della sabbia, in which he depicted the lives, folk customs, and culture and history of the archipelago’s various islands.
The Camillians have made many contributions to Taiwan, including the establishment of the now-defunct St Mary’s Wanshan Sanitarium in Yilan’s Dongshan Township (冬山), which was the nation’s first tuberculosis care center, housing more than 2,000 patients at its peak.
The world-famous Lan Yang Dancers (蘭陽舞蹈團) was also founded by Father Gian Carlo Michelini, another Camillian.
Other establishments include: the Huimin Opportunity Center in Penghu County; while in Yilan County there are the St Camillus Long-term Care Center and St Camillus Center for Intellectual Disability in Sansing Township (三星); the Huimin Service Center for the Disabled in Wujie Township (五結); St Mary’s Junior College of Medicine, Nursing and Management in Sansing Township; the Lan Yang Youth Catholic Center in Luodong; and Hsing Ho Hospital in Jiaosi Township (礁溪). Nearly all these are funded by the Camillians.
Now that Italy is suffering, it is time for Taiwanese to express gratitude, as when the public generously donated supplies to Japan after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011.
On April 1, Father Giuseppe Didone — who founded many of the institutions run by the Camillians in Taiwan — issued a public letter asking for NT$11 million to be donated to St Mary’s Hospital in Luodong so it could buy emergency supplies for medical personnel in Italy.
Didone originally set a fundraising deadline of Wednesday, but NT$150 million — more than 10 times the original goal — was raised within six days, prompting him to halt the campaign early.
This is probably the best thing Taiwan could do in return for the Camillians and their charitable deeds.
Lu Chun-yi is a pastor in the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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