Fung-Bing Ho has encountered several Maryknoll missioners throughout her life and says, for her, that’s simply “God’s will.”
Born in 1951 in Guangzhou, China, Ho was a child when her family moved to Macau, where she briefly attended a Catholic school. When her family moved again, this time to Hong Kong, she lost contact with Catholicism.
One day, by chance, she came across a group of people praying the rosary. When the Lord’s Prayer started, Ho began reciting the prayer she had memorized as a child. “That was the invitation,” she says.
At age 16, Ho became the first Catholic in her family when she was baptized at St. Teresa’s Church. Maryknoll Sister Mary Doretta Leonard served there as a catechist. “She was so gentle, so kind,” Ho recalls, “and that gave me a good impression of Catholics.”
By then Ho was already working as a machine operator at a semiconductor factory to support her family, a job she started at age 13 after her father died from cancer. “So many teenagers earned their living working in factories,” she says. “At the time we did not have compulsory education. I continued with my studies in the evening.”
In the early 1970s, Ho joined the International Young Christian Workers movement (IYCW), which advocates for the rights and dignity of young workers. Maryknoll Father Thomas Danaher was the group’s chaplain at the time.
“He helped me know the value of work and the dignity of humanity,” Ho says. “I built up my self-confidence.”
Father Danaher espoused the See-Judge-Act methodology, which Ho, promoted to supervisor at 21 years old, taught in turn to new teenage workers. “You have to concern yourself with the problems and needs of your working place and your family,” Ho says, adding that even “a small action can change the situation.”
Ho also recounts that the IYCW was regularly invited by Maryknoll sisters to speak about workers’ rights at Maryknoll Convent School.
After many years as a coordinator for IYCW, and during that time getting married and becoming a mother, Ho felt called to more fulfilling work. In 1993, she was hired as a pastoral caretaker to work alongside Maryknoll Sister Catherine Rowe at Our Lady of Maryknoll Hospital.
At first, the work was challenging. “I told Sister Cathy I wanted to resign,” Ho recalls. It was hard to accompany dying patients and to get used to the messy aspects of patient care.
“In Chinese culture, when a person passes away, we don’t touch the body,” Ho explains. “But by the grace of God and the Holy Spirit, I have touched many, because so many times nobody else came. I’d say, ‘Go ahead peacefully. I’m by your side.’”
Sister Rowe encouraged Ho to persevere and she served in that ministry for 18 years before retiring in 2011.
During this time, Ho also continued learning. She attended the Holy Spirit Centre in Hong Kong, earning a bachelor’s degree in religious studies. Maryknoll Father Elmer Wurth was a founding member of the center.
Ho traveled many times to New York to visit the retired missioners she had known in Hong Kong. Little did she know that a new Maryknoll connection was about to come.
As a decades-long parishioner at St. Mary’s Church in the district of Hung Hom, Ho was elated when Maryknoll Father Daniel Kim joined the parish staff. “Father Kim is very approachable,” she says. “The elderly, the young, and even the Sunday school children love him very much.”
At St. Mary’s Ho now helps other adults prepare for baptism, as well as leading the rosary and preparing the altar. Additionally, she participates in a prison ministry by visiting inmates serving life sentences.
Ho says that Father Kim’s homilies relate to people’s lives and are easy to understand. “Maryknoll Fathers evangelize with their words, deeds and love for the people,” she says.
To describe the many Maryknollers she has known throughout her life, Ho uses the Cantonese phrase 醑嬣 (jan jan), meaning “benefactor.” The first character conveys kindness, mercy, charity and grace. The second character means, simply, human being.
Ho describes the term in action: “People who do good to others.”
Featured image: Parishioner Fung-Bing Ho and Maryknoll Father Daniel Kim are shown at St. Mary’s Church, where the priest serves on the parish staff. (Courtesy of Fung-Bing Ho/Hong Kong)
