austraLasia #1738
An ambassadorial act without rival!
ROME: 18th January 2007 -- If you were to say that just about the only person
of note not present that night was the Holy Father, you would not be far off
the mark. South Korean ambassador to the Holy See, Mr Bosco Seong Youm,
at the Holy See since 2003, has long wanted to express his gratitude to
Salesians in particular, a good number of whom played particular roles over his
lifetime, growing up, studying (at the UPS), holding academic positions of note
and finally taking up his current role. One only needs to imagine the
list of invitees - several of his former professors are now holding one or
other 'purple' position; there are three other ambassadors to the Holy See who
are past pupils, also. The invitation to an evening of 'gratitude' was
extended to the Rector Major and his Vicar as well as a number of Council
members with Korean connections. The evening was 16th January.
Mr Seong shared some of his vocational story with those
present, first as a past pupil, then as a Salesian himself, and finally as a
married man and active lay person in the Korean Church. He noted that he
was baptized 'Bosco' at a time, still during the 2nd World War, but not many
years after Fr Auffray's life of Don Bosco had been translated into Korean for
the first time. This gave rise to some enthusiasm amongst the clergy for Don
Bosco. Soon after the Korean war, in 1953, he was accepted into the Salesian
school at Kwanju as a border and orphan. On his mother's death the Salesian
catechist had told him not to worry, since Mary would now be his mother.
He has kept that thought and reflected on its truth in his life since.
During the '80s Mr Seong studied at the UPS and majored in
Latin. He returned to Korea, and eventually rose to the ranks of
professor of philosophy at the prestigious So-Gang university, and the
University of Foreign Languages at Seoul. He was also by now regarded as the
foremost Latin scholar in those parts and took up the translation of
Augustine's De Civitate Dei, receiving the philosophy (western) award
for the effort. He maintains a solid regime of translation and other writing,
with some 100 titles to his name, including Christian Churches in a Time of
Relativism. He has also founded a Theological Research Centre and has been
president of the Korean Catholic Human Rights Committee.
Recently, when the about-to-be-appointed UN Secretary
General, Mr Ban Ki Moon, visited Rome, Mr Seong took him on a guided tour of
the Catacombs (St Caliistus, naturally) and handed him a copy of the Compendium
of Social Teaching of the Catholic Church as a 'vademecum' for his new
service to the world at the UN.
The evening was not all serious. It was replete with
entertainment (pieces from Cimatti's 'Mark the Fisherman' and Cagliero's
'Cacciatore'), some Korean dancing and a traditional Good Night from the Rector
Major, proud, as Don Bosco would have been, of a past pupil who, by virtue of
the education received, was now contributing so much to Church and society. Mr
Seong has several children, one of whom is a Salesian in Seoul.
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