The 300-bed Divine Mercy Hospital near Bangladesh's capital Dhaka will become the biggest Christian-run healthcare facility in the Muslim-majority nation when it opens in November this year.
The hospital, being built at Mothbari area of Kaliganj Upazila under Gazipur district, at a cost of 3 billion taka (US$ 28 million), is the signature project of Christian Cooperative Credit Union Limited (CCCUL) and has about 50,000 Catholic and Protestant members with total assets of 12 billion taka (US$ 110 million), said UCA (Union of Catholic Asia) News on Tuesday.
Founded on July 3, 1955 by American Holy Cross missionary, Father Charles J. Young, this lay-run organization is the largest non-banking financial organization in Bangladesh aiming to promote the socio-economic welfare of people, including the minority Christian community.
Young allowed clergy to be advisers of the union but ensured that decision-making powers rested with laypeople, which became the key to its success, says Nirmol Rozario, 62, the union's former president and a lay Catholic.
Rozario, currently the president of the Bangladesh Christian Association (BCA), the country's largest lay-run Christian forum, however, says the Church hierarchy lags behind in promoting lay people like Young did more than seven decades ago. A democratic mindset "does not exist in the hierarchy and its structure," Rozario told UCA News.
For a change in this mindset, Rozario suggests that priests be allowed to study in secular universities "for having a universal understanding of the common people."
"Only philosophy, theology, psychology, and divinity won't suffice to work with the common people in general," he added.
"Laypeople are not rivals or competitors against the clergy. If we can avoid rigidity and cooperate with openness, the Church can be stronger and achieve much more," Rozario said.
The Parish of the Holy Rosary in central Dhaka, is an example of clergy and laity collaboration, says its parish priest, Father Subroto Boniface Gomes
The largest Catholic parish in Bangladesh, with some 15,000 Catholics, was visited by Pope Francis during his trip to the country in 2017. Most of its parishioners are migrants, who settled in the capital from various parts of the country.
"It is impossible to run a large parish like ours without the active participation of laypeople," Gomes told UCA News.
The church is managed by a 35-member parish council that includes three priests, two nuns and 11 laywomen, the priest noted.
