Mission and culture are essential characteristics of an SVD; and with the two years Cross-Cultural Training Program, I was given a taste in different ministerial settings.

They included teaching English at the local high school, working with Vietnamese migrant workers, visiting the poor, engaging in parish ministries, and helping HIV/AIDS patients, in particular, teenagers living with HIV at The Mother of Perpetual Help Foundation in Nongbualamphu, Thailand.

As he farewells Thailand and the AUS Province to take up work with refugees in the German Province, Br Bernd Ruffing SVD recalls his ministry in Thailand as being a journey of friendship and relationship with the people.

“I tried to be a brother to those who needed someone who’d walk with them for some time,” he says.

“I am a sinner,” said the newly appointed Pope responding to his first interview. By the same token in introducing myself to the AUS province, I will take on Pope Francis’s words and proclaim that I too, first and foremost, am a sinner.

To see me and to understand my physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological make-up, one has to look through that lens. It is inseparable to my being. It took me 27 years to actually scratch the surface of that truth. Of course, three years of vows were momentous for my understanding.

The Australian Province of the Society of the Divine Word reaches across to Thailand, where our members work with poor and marginalised communities in a range of areas, including parish work, teaching, and care for children and adults living with AIDs.