A dozen foreign priests, nuns, missionaries and pastors were honored at the Presidential Office Building yesterday for their decades of dedicated service to Taiwan.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) conferred the Order of Brilliant Star with Violet Grand Cordon to each of the 12 religious workers, saying that their work had brought serenity and peace to Taiwan.
On behalf of the public, Ma expressed his deepest gratitude to the honorees for their service in the areas of education, charity and social service.
According to the Presidential Office, the 12 religious workers have each served for at least 40 years in Taiwan, and one of them, 102-year-old Canadian priest Etienne Georges Beauregard, has been in Taiwan for 68 years.
At the ceremony, Ma highlighted their achievements, including the establishment of St Joseph’s Hospital in Yunlin County, which was cofounded by Dutch priest Antoine Pierrot 60 years ago.
Pierrot often drove the hospital’s ambulance and helped fix medical equipment in the facility, Ma said.
Responding on behalf of the honorees, Pierrot thanked the president for bestowing “such a great honor” on them.
The other honorees are nuns Theresa Kastner of the Netherlands and Miljenka Schnetzer of Sweden; US missionary Juanelva Rose; US pastors David Alexander and Daniel Freeman; and priests Brendan O’Connel of the US, Andres Diaz de Rabago of Spain, Yves Moal of France and Gian Carlo Michelini and Giovanni Rizz of Italy.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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