by Paolo Affatato
Vientiane (Agenzia Fides) - "I am ready for Jesus and will be his martyr if I am worthy and if he wants me. I now believe that the time is very close," wrote the Laotian priest Titus Banchong Thopanhong, shortly before he was arrested by the security forces of the "Pathet Lao" in 1976.
Titus Banchong Thopanhong, Apostolic Administrator of Luang Prabang from 1999 to 2019, died in Vientiane on January 25 at the age of 78. He succumbed to a long illness, also due to the hardships he had suffered for 50 years. Father Titus was a member of the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) and was imprisoned for seven years. During his entire imprisonment, nothing was heard from him. Many thought he had been killed. Instead, he was released and was able to resume his life as a simple pastor for the small Catholic community in Laos, which today numbers about 60,000 Catholics.
Titus is the name given to Banchong Topagnong at the age of 8 when he was baptized with his family in the Hmong village of Kiukiatan in northern Laos, where he was born in 1947. In this village, from 1957 to 1958, he was one of the altar boys of Father Mario Borzaga, the missionary who was to be beatified in 2016. "Titus still retains a precious memory of this priest who profoundly marked his life," recalls his confrere Fabio Ciardi, who had a deep human and spiritual friendship with Father Titus. With the missionaries, young Titus had the opportunity to deepen his journey of faith: during these years, between 1958 and 1969, he attended Seminaries first in Vientiane and then in Luang Prabang. Father Angelo Pelis, also an OMI missionary who was then director of the Seminary in Luang Prabang, remembers him as a "simple, reserved, gentle and smiling boy". "The character trait that was to mark him throughout his life was humility: a humility modeled on Jesus Christ," says Father Pelis. Young Titus decided to continue his formation with the Oblates in Italy and in 1970 Monsignor Alessandro Staccioli (OMI), then Apostolic Vicar of Luang Prabang, sent him to study in Italy, where he studied philosophy and theology first in San Giorgio Canavese and then, from 1973, in Vermicino (near Rome).
Father Titus writes in one of the letters collected in the book "Even in prison I can love", edited by Michele Zanzucchi: "I was still uncertain about my vocation, but little by little I felt in my heart the desire to follow Jesus in a radical way, that is, to follow the Lord who seemed to want me to love him. It was he who was interested in me, not I in him. He had taken me little by little and made me understand that in him I would always find the true meaning of my life." While he was in Italy, his country experienced a change of regime, with the communist resistance fighters of the "Pathet Lao" taking power and in 1975 all missionaries were expelled from the country.
Father Titus felt a strong desire to return to his homeland and to be a priest for the people of Laos, a desire to be a witness for Christ there and not elsewhere. This is what drives Father Titus to return to Laos. "I have chosen the Church of Laos and I feel that God wants me there and not anywhere else," he writes. "Even if I am a priest for just one day, I will return to Laos." And he continues: "I have decided to return to Laos because there is no one there for the apostolate. I am returning so that we can all be stronger, I am returning to help the faithful. When I returned, I chose God alone; it is He who makes me return and that is why I am returning." He was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of Vientiane on 28 September 1975 by the then Bishop of Vientiane, Thomas Nantha, the first of the Hmong ethnic group. The next day he wrote: "I am no longer afraid because I belong to the Lord. I am ready for anything. I am very happy. No one can separate me from Him. Every day I discover more and more that He is with me. I have Him... He asks me for everything, I give Him everything."
He began a strictly controlled pastoral ministry, with the threat of arrest, first in Luang Prabang, then in Vientiane, and finally in Paksane. He travels through the villages on his motorbike, visits people and administers the sacraments to Catholic families. Although he never used critical words against those in power, Father Titus was imprisoned three times and "learned to find even in the cruelest hardships the tenderness of God's love", Pelis recalls his imprisonment: "You could say that the other prisoners in prison were all converted, they became good. With love you can also break the bonds of hatred." After his release from prison he did not complain: "I was released," he writes. "After they released me, I was able to visit all the Christians in the province of Siam and I found them. Many who had been there for over 30 years no longer had priests," he said.
After being appointed "Apostolic Administrator" of Luang Prabang, the old capital, he lived the life of a missionary, dedicating himself with zeal and charity to serving his people. In 2005, with joy and enthusiasm, he told Fides that in the Vicariate of Luang Prabang he had received permission to open the first Catholic church in northern Laos since the painful times of 1975, after the communist revolution. And he said he was "very edified by the faith and devotion of the local families". In his pastoral work he went "step by step, we go as far as the Lord allows us". This hope was realized when he saw the first new vocations to the priesthood blossom in the small Laotian community and when he participated in the beatification liturgy in 2016 of 17 Laotian missionaries and lay people killed by communist resistance fighters between 1954 and 1970. Among the six Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) beatified was the young Italian missionary Mario Borzaga, who died in 1960 at the age of 27 along with the local catechist Paul Thoj Xyooj. Titus had taken them close to his heart. (Agenzia Fides, 1/2/2025)