CAMBODIA A Cambodian priest is the new apostolic prefect of Kompong Cham

Father Pierre Suon Hangly was appointed by Pope Francis. For the first time since the time of Pol Pot, a local priest will lead an ecclesiastical constituency. The only antecedent of a Cambodian bishop was Bishop Chmar Salas, who died of exhaustion in forced labor camps during the persecution of the Khmer Rouge.

Phnom Penh () – Father Pierre Suon Hangly, a 50-year-old priest from Phnom Penh, is the new Apostolic Prefect of Kompong Cham, one of the three ecclesiastical districts that make up the Cambodian Catholic Church. Pope Francis appointed him today to succeed the apostolic administrator Fr. Bruno Cosme, who belongs to the Missions étrangères de Paris.

The appointment of Father Suon Hangly is an important step for the Cambodian Catholic community, which was reborn just over twenty years ago and now has some 20,000 faithful in a country of more than 16 million inhabitants. Father Pierre, ordained a priest for the Apostolic Vicariate of Phnom Penh in 2001, is the first local priest to assume the leadership of an apostolic prefecture after the terrible experience lived by the Cambodian Church during the persecution of the Pol Pot communist regime.

The only antecedent of a Cambodian bishop is Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas, who at a very young age was ordained coadjutor bishop of Phnom Penh on April 14, 1975, three days before the Cambodian capital was conquered by the Khmer Rouge. After the expulsion of the Apostolic Vicar – the French Msgr. Yves Ramousse – Msgr. Chmar Salas and the then Apostolic Prefect of Batambang, Fr. Paul Tep Im Sotha, would have died in the wave of violence and deprivation that the Khmer Rouge brought with them. Both are among the Cambodian martyrs whose beatification process has been underway since 2015.

Father Pierre Suon Hangly is therefore a face of the local Church that is reborn from the ashes of this tragedy. He was born on April 14, 1972 in Phnom-Penh and was ordained a priest on December 9, 2001. From 2002 to 2007 he was a parish priest in the Kampot/Takeo pastoral sector. From 2007 to 2015 he completed his studies in France at the Institut Catholique de Paris, obtaining a licentiate in Spiritual Theology. Back in Cambodia he was a parish priest in the Phnom Penh Thmey pastoral sector and in recent years he held the positions of vicar general of the Apostolic Vicariate of Phnom-Penh and superior of the local seminary.

When he announced the appointment of Fr. Suon Hangly, the Apostolic Vicar of Phnom Penh, Msgr. Olivier Schmitthaeusler, thanked him for the service he has rendered to the Church and invited the faithful to pray that God grant him “a strong faith, full of of love and hope, to be a zealous shepherd of Kompong Cham”.