‘The wheelchair bishop’: Father Kike Figaredo dedicates ministry to disabled in Cambodia

 

Vatican City, Oct 24, 2024 / 11:30 am (CNA).

“Don’t go crazy. If you want to know me, I live with others. My face is that of people. If you look for me, look for me in people.”

This was what Enrique “Kike” Figaredo — known as the “wheelchair bishop” — discerned when, at just 16 years old, he prayed to God to enlighten him and thus discovered his vocation.

Since that “special enlightenment” during a Holy Thursday spent in a Taizé monastery, when he was “looking for Jesus like a madman,” everything changed. Now a Jesuit priest and the apostolic prefect of Battambang, Cambodia, Figaredo, a native of the Asturias region of northwestern Spain, shared with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, the witness of his life dedicated to those most in need.

While not a bishop, Figaredo as apostolic prefect has certain administrative faculties of a bishop.

“That day I began to ‘see’; I came out of that prayer enlightened — that is, happy. I began to see people differently, I no longer saw them as strangers and I felt that they were going to talk to me about God.”

What Figaredo didn’t yet know was that his missionary soul would take him far from his home in Gijón, Spain, to a country in Southeast Asia that he barely knew how to find on a map: Cambodia.

After being ordained a priest, he arrived at the Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand through the Jesuit Refugee Service and later moved to the Cambodian city of Battambang.

Figaredo dedicated his life to caring for the disabled, especially those maimed by anti-personnel mine explosions, a legacy of the genocide perpetrated in the 1970s by troops of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, better known as the Khmer Rouge, whose aftermath is still felt.

From that first day of his new life more than 40 years ago, FIgaredo clearly remembers having seen “the face of God in the children” and how the fear he felt when he arrived “was transformed into peace” when he saw the joy of the children playing, “happy, smiling, barefoot. There was life there, there was God,” he said.

He also described, as if time had not passed, the person in charge of the place, who was missing an eye and a leg. “He told me that for everything they needed, they would ask me. From that afternoon on, I was never afraid again; the Lord asked me to trust in him through the language of faith.”

Figaredo told ACI Prensa that these people are not “disabled” but people with “different abilities.” However, he pointed out that “they have special needs” and that caring for them is essential.

‘Pray more and think less’

In a predominantly Buddhist country, Catholics are only “insignificant” in number, but they are very present in social and religious life. Regarding the faith of those he evangelizes, he emphasized above all their simplicity and deep spirituality, “influenced by aspects that come from Buddhist culture.”

“We come from a more functional society, where we seek results. They know how to enjoy the presence of God in silence, because they believe that reality is inhabited by God, and that is very beautiful,” he explained.

Although, he noted, “the problem in Cambodia is that they believe in too many spirits, including evil ones that can dominate people. That’s why my motto is ‘pray more and think less.’”

Physical and spiritual help

The missionary noted the importance of helping these people physically, although, he said, “the decisive thing is to touch their hearts … when you touch their hearts with faith, there is a change.”

Regarding the Catholic faith, he highlighted two elements that especially help conversion. On the one hand, the Passion and Resurrection. “We have passion, but it’s not the last word. After the Passion there is resurrection, and that helps them a lot.”

On the other hand, the Spirit of the Lord “is liberating, it makes us free.” For the apostolic prefect, this “has an impressive force. And there are seeds of faith already in the people. When we tell them these things, the Holy Spirit is at work.”

The conversion of Vary

Figaredo could help but be moved as he remembered the conversion of Vary, a Cambodian girl who belonged to a family and an “extremely Buddhist” background but who nevertheless attended catechism classes and prayed with the missionaries.

One day, she went to the Virgin with a special request: that the director of the center for the disabled could get pregnant after a long time trying.

“Within three days, she was pregnant. So then this girl was baptized with the name Catalina and now she’s a catechist. She went to pray with faith, looking for a sign from God, and she committed herself to him,” Figaredo recalled.

The priest added that the new infant was named Karuna, which means “compassion,” since “she was born through an act of compassion from the Virgin.”

Projects for those in need

Over the years, Figaredo has promoted various action projects for the disabled, starting with the NGO Sauce, dealing “with the urgent” and gradually growing with initiatives for development, education, and social integration of the most disadvantaged people.

In 1991, he founded a school for disabled children in Phnom Penh, where they also build wooden wheelchairs known as the Mekong, in reference to the river that crosses Cambodia and five other Asian countries. Here they take in vulnerable street children, orphans, and disabled people.

In Battambang there is also the Arrupe Center, where different projects for children’s education and adult training are carried out.

They also have an agricultural and livestock area, a restaurant called the Lonely Tree Café, a cafeteria, a hotel, a textile center where they make Kromas — the traditional Cambodian scarf — and the Mutitaa clothing brand, where they sell garments that can be purchased online from Spain. All of these, according to the Spanish priest, are “small models of social integration.”

Volunteers from different countries come to the mission every year. Many come to help during the summer and the adults usually stay longer, about a year. Then there are others who come only for a few months and end up staying because they say the people have something that “captivates you.”

A call to personal conversion

Since the beginning of October, Figaredo has been in Rome to participate in the Synod on Synodality, where he has had the opportunity to help many people “learn to point to Cambodia on the map.”

He also expressed to ACI Prensa his desire that the synodal process “makes real changes.” According to the Jesuit, the synod “is calling us to pastoral conversion” and, above all, “personal conversion.”

Figaredo explained that this conversion also requires putting the Holy Spirit in the center, “and not oneself,” in order to also be able to “go out on a mission.” He also emphasized that the Church “cannot be defined by institutions” and that “listening” is essential in this process.

“The day when we all know how to put God’s mercy at the center, we will see that what defines the synodal Church is the Trinity, the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Until we have this model embedded in our hearts, there will be no synodal Church.”

He thus pointed out that Jesus “spoke of the kingdom of God and spoke of the mission, and then came the Church.”

“If we have all these conversions, going through personal conversion, conversion in relationships, and conversion to the Trinity, then I think there will be a before and after,” he added.

He also referred to this event as “a paradigm shift,” where we go from “the static to the dynamic.” “The Church is a people that is on a journey and we must accompany her. And this will not change in a day; we need time in order to think more about the churches and less about the institutions, which are a support, but not the identity of the Church. Identity is the mission inspired by the Trinity.”

A special gift for Pope Francis

The missionary has traveled to the Eternal City with a special gift for the Holy Father: a Mekong wheelchair, characterized by having three wheels and made of wood. “The pope already knows that he has a wheelchair waiting for him,” Figaredo said.

However, he pointed out that the gift is full of meaning. “This wheelchair was invented in Cambodia; it is made with local materials and the wheels are made of rubber bicycle wheels, designed especially for the countryside, not for the city.”

“I think it’s very beautiful for Pope Francis to be sitting in a chair made by disabled people who have survived the war and who have made wheelchairs for other disabled people.”

Figaredo confessed to ACI Prensa his desire: “That the pope sit in this chair and preach for peace from there. He is a disabled person, since he has not been able to walk easily for some time, and he is the world’s great leader for peace. The fact that he should sit in the wheelchair for the disabled and preach from there has great meaning.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.