By Felix Anthony
Miao, March 13, 2019: Two French missionaries were remembered at the 60th Tibetan National Uprising Day commemoration in Miao town in Arunachal Pradesh.
“Tibet and Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh have an age-old connection,” said Likro Mossang, women president of Miao Diocese in east Arunachal Pradesh.
“French missionaries Nicolas Krick and Augustine Bourry were killed on their way to Tibet in 1854. They sowed the first seeds of Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh 165 years ago before they were killed on August 2 the same year at the Tibet-Arunachal border region by a Mishmi Tribe chieftain.”
Tibetans all over the world gather together every year on March 10 to pay homage to the thousands of heroes who laid their lives, resisting brutal suppression of the Chinese Communist occupation forces in 1959.
“Although Fathers Krick and Bourry could not enter Tibet, my presence with you today as a guest on the 60th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day is like fulfilling their dream,” Mossang said addressing some 500 Tibetan women from the Miao Tibetan Settlement.
They then took out a candlelight peace march from their settlement to Miao town, covering distance of five kilometers on foot.
With 500 families of more than 3,000 people Miao has the largest Tibetan settlement in northeastern India.
The 60th Tibetan National Uprising Day was organized by the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of Miao unit.
The memories of the Servants of God Krick and Bourry, the missionaries to Tibet getting revived on the 60th Tibetan National Uprising Day augurs well for the cause of canonization of the two martyrs.
Mossang expressed the hope that Tibetans settled across the world would be able to return to their homeless through the intercession of the two French missionaries, who are now Servants of God, the first stage in the canonization process in the Catholic Church.