THE world's first Chinese abbot was ordained at a ceremony at Our Lady of Joy Abbey on Lantau yesterday.
Hong Kong's Dom Clement Kong Hak-moon, 62, received his blessing from Cardinal John Baptist Wu Cheng-chung in a solemn ceremony in front of 1,000 supporters from Hong Kong, Taiwan, the USA, the Philippines and Japan.
Cardinal Wu said: 'We gather here today for a historic and significant occasion because we give blessing to the first [Chinese] abbot in Christianity.' Dom Clement Kong received a congratulatory letter yesterday from Pope John Paul.
On September 5 last year, the monastery was given abbey status and Dom Clement Kong, superior of the monastery of the Holy Mother of God, Shuili, Taiwan, was elected its first abbot, for a six-year term.
His Order of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, or Trappists, has about 170 communities worldwide and is 900 years old. It has more than 3,700 monks and 2,100 nuns around the globe and has had a presence in southern China for 72 years.
Yesterday Dom Clement Kong formally became the Steward of the House of God in Tai Shui Hang valley, half-an-hour's walk along the coast south of Discovery Bay.
