[Click here for original French text]
Excerpt from 19 October 2012 issue of Contacts
Unofficial translation (than you Jean-Guy :))
……………………………….
Br. Guy Lambert (Tokyo)
The most important memory I have of Br. Marcel is about the odyssey of our traveling
time to and from England for our two years sojourn. July 2nd, 1960 in Ploêrmel, for
Jean-Marie de la Mennaisʼ anniversary celebration, you, Br. Lessard and myself, while
we were only students in England, occupied a place of honor amongst the Japanese
delegates, while the veterans like Br. Thomas were away from the limelight in an area
reserved for members of the Second Novitiate.
That same afternoon we boarded a train for Lisieux and then we travelled throughout
France right to Lourdes with Br.Lessard as our driver(quite an adventure that Br. Elisée,
Gen.Sup.(Superior), viewed as scandalous, as he related in it an interview with two
Japanese missionary brothers present at the Second Novitiate in the following months)
In August of 1961, the return trip to Japan with stopovers in London, in SantʼIvo and the
Vatican in Rome.Then the first missionary brothers flight aboard a jet plane of the
Luftansa company, from Rome to Bangkok, where the Fathers of the Paris Foreign
Missions gave us a guided tour of the city.
The following morning, after apologies from Air France who could not honor our
reservations because of over booking, we took a flight with KLM and arrived in Tokyo
the same evening. At St-Maryʼs we were immediately made to feel at ease and we
started the school year in September, both teaching to 3rd graders. We consulted each
other to prepare our lessons, worked together to decorate our class at Christmas,
studied Japanese following our afternoon work and together we prepared our reports
required of the University Sophia for our advanced courses in English.
You were quickly renamed “Brother Tokyo Tower”, asking parents and students alike to
stand on the third step of the stairway in order to be able to speak to them face to face.
We wonʼt forget your efforts, in Inawashiro, to remove some large boulders to allow us
to prepare the lawn in front of our summer cottage.
Finally we parted ways in 1966, you traveling to Yokohama and I to Shizuoka until my
return to St. Maryʼs in 1982.
Congratulations, Marcel, on this double anniversary, 76 years old and 60 years of
religious life.
I remember Bro Lessard explaining to class that kleptomania is an illness, but he never explained that going after pupils in his style of way was an illness. He went on to say that an illness such as kleptomania is not a reason to be let go lightly.
Pedophilia is an illness according to DMS-5, and Wikipedia says:
‘Pedophilia is termed pedophilic disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and the manual defines it as a paraphilia involving intense and recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about prepubescent children that have either been acted upon or which cause the person with the attraction distress or interpersonal difficulty.’
I remember being excessively harassed at St. Mary’s for any irregular illness. Perhaps, now that Bro. Lessard can now be deemed ill, those harassers should bullyrag the Columban brothers off their guilt by association, or by promotion (likes of Lambert.) Promotion of known guilties like Lambert is beyond the definition of the lynchers I had to endure.