When James Hsu (徐敏超), a young Hakka man from Pingtung County, undertook his alternative military service seven years ago by helping renovate a church in Hsinchu County, little did he suspect that his life would be changed forever by the late priest who built it.
It was while working on the church — built by the late Italian Jesuit missionary Guerrino Marsecano in 1965 — that he heard about the 627-page English-Hakka dictionary compiled by Marsecano and a group of editors. Hsu was impressed with this amazing achievement.
“Even Hakka people might not have been able to put together such a great dictionary,” Hsu said, adding that the dictionary went as far as listing different Hakka pronunciations for the same word to reflect linguistic differences within Taiwan's various Hakka communities.
Hsu’s passion about a man he never met — Marsecano died in 2000 — is indicative of the power of the Jesuit priest’s legacy among the Hakka. This is particularly evident in Hukou Township (湖口), where the church, whose architecture is clearly a manifestation of the Italian priest’s influence, is located at the entrance of Hukou Old Street and remains a major landmark and tourist draw.
After the church was built in 1965, it was home to religious services for nearly three decades, with Marsecano delivering Mass in Hakka in its early years before he was transferred to another parish in Hsinchu County's Guansi Township (關西).
The church gradually lost its pull, however, and shut down in 1993 because of the falling congregation and number of children attending the church-affiliated kindergarten.
In 2001, the residents decided to renovate the church as part of a project to revive the 300m-long Old Street, lined with two-story Taiwanese-style red brick houses noteworthy for their baroque porches.
The church was converted into a center for local art and culture, with an exhibition hall detailing the history of Catholic missionaries in the Hsinchu area, where the English-Hakka dictionary, a prime example of the Italian priest’s dedication, is displayed.
Published in 1959 by Kuangchi Press, it contains the Hakka equivalents for 13,721 English words and 20,000 English phrases.
Father Wang Wen-lin (汪文麟), director of the Old Hukou Church Museum, said that the dictionary had actually been forgotten until he and other community residents recovered it from a pile of dusty relics left behind in the church, when they were cleaning up before renovation work was due to start.
He was thankful the volume was found and praised the way Marsecano immersed himself in Hakka culture.
“When a foreigner knows the Hakka language so deeply, it means that the person has treated Hakka villages as his home,” Wang said.
Touched by the Italian missionary’s devotion to fitting into the Hakka way of life, Hsu was inspired by the church and the dictionary to learn more about the priest.
Marsecano, born in 1915 in Ferentino in the Italian province of Frosinone, came to Taiwan in 1955 from the Philippines. He had been stationed in China but was expelled by the communists before traveling to the Philippine province of Iloilo. After he arrived in Taiwan, the Jesuit missionary was posted to the parish of Hukou.
In 2005, Hsu traveled around Italy for 80 days on a “dream trip” sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs and met Marsecano’s sister, Vittorina, who is a Jesuit nun.
He presented her — the only living member of Marsecano's family — with documents related to Marsecano's life in Taiwan and in return received a big hug and the nun's heartfelt gratitude, Hsu said.
At that moment Hsu determined to find out even more about the priest, whom he describes as a man with a big heart and immense love for the world.
Hsu said his next plan is to fly to Iloilo to track down the priest’s legacy there.
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