A Seminarian For Thirty Years
By Fr Dominic Derramas
The author, a priest of the Diocese of Bacolod, is studying for his Doctorate in Canon Law at the Angelicum University, Rome. He is staying at the Pontificio Collegio Filippino where Fr Peter Tuyen The Tran also resided while studying at the Lateran University in Rome. That’s how the young Bacoleño priest, who wrote about the faith of his late father, Antonio Sr, in the May-June 2016 issue of MISYONonline.com, came to know the remarkable and inspiring story of the Vietnamese priest.
Fr Peter Tran, Chancellor of the Diocese of St Paul in Alberta, Canada, 2004-2015
St John Paul II, on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination, said that every priestly vocation at its deepest level, ‘is a great mystery; it is a gift which infinitely transcends the individual.’ (John Paul II, Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of my Priestly Ordination.) This is true for the vocation story of Fr Peter Tran who became a seminarian at the age of eleven but was ordained at the age of 41. His priesthood is, in the words of St John Paul II, both a gift and a mystery.
The author is a member of the Scarboro Foreign Missionary Society (
Adelaida A. Cantona, now living in Toronto, Canada, tells us how Columbans formed her as a child and as a professional, and how their influence guides her in a new country.
Sr Angela Battung, RGS has been a missionary most of her life. Now in Canada with older people, she looks back on her difficult years in Korea and the frustrating ministries she was involved in. Strangely enough it was at work with the prostitutes that grace almost became tangible and it was this work which she remembers with joy.