SPRINGTIME FOR RTRC
From 9-10 June 2016, Fr. Cyril Niphot Thianwihan, Director of RTRC, attended a meeting to prepare for the 50th anniversary of Populorum Progressio which was organized by the Pontificium Consilium de Iustitia et Pace (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace). The occasion was a special invitation to Rome as a representative of the local Church of Thailand who has been active in the promotion of justice and peace.
In April 3-4, 2017, he was invited by Cardinal Turkson, D.D., Prefect of the Dicastery for promoting Integral Human Development that Pope Francis established on August 17, 2016.
The key celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio was an International Conference entitled “Perspectives on Integral Human Development: 50 years from the Populorum Progressio” in which the representatives discussed on the mission of the Church in the service of the most vulnerable.
The key celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio was an International Conference entitled “Perspectives on Integral Human Development: 50 years from the Populorum Progressio” in which the representatives discussed on the mission of the Church in the service of the most vulnerable.
Last of all, from September 18-20, 2018, he participated in a World Conference on Xenophobia, Racism, and Populist Nationalism in the Context of Global Migration, organized the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development & The World Council of Churches in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The World Conference explored how the churches could give moral leadership in addressing these 3 related abovementioned issues. This exploration involved self-examination and humble acknowledgement of our own vulnerability to the corrosive power of fear which threatened the unity of Body of Christ. The Conference urged the churches to promote compassionate and constructive responses informed by our Christian faith and traditions of respect for the equal dignity of persons and the protection of human rights for all through building inclusive, just and peaceful societies.
These participation of the 3 events in Rome, with a personal encounter with Pope Francis on September 20, 2018, have truly legitimized the integral development promoted in the last 40 years by DISAC and RTRC in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. RTRC is experiencing the dynamic power of God’s Ruach to steadfastly implement the Spirit of Vatican II-FABC by establishing the Asian School of Wisdom (ASW), with a Resource Centre, offering Training Programs, a Bachelor in Cultural Agriculture in Thai, and latter. MA & Ph. D in both Thai and English, for Asia and the Global South-North.
ASW will be an emerging hub of a consortium which aims to realize the call of Pope Francis in 2015 by ushering in a change of era that facilitates an “irruption of the sacred” from within the interstitial spaces of the global secular world.
