Protect and preserve your culture, says KK prelate

PENAMPANG – Archbishop John Wong urged the people to protect and preserve their beautiful culture through the generations in his speech when launching the 20th Penampang Parish-level Kaamatan Festival on 14 May 2017.

“Maintain your culture. Be guided by the Holy Spirit so that your culture may be preserved not only for this celebration but that it may be protected from one generation to the next,” he said at the launching after the Mass at St Aloysius Limbanak.

The prelate also marvelled at how the colourful season of thanksgiving has enabled people of various ethnicity to celebrate together the month-long festivities in May each year.

Parish pastoral chairman Lawrence Bisuil highlighted the theme chosen for the celebration “Memurnikan Budaya Melalui Kuasa Roh Kudus” and echoed the prelate’s call to depend on the Holy Spirit to sanctify the culture.

In turn, assistant pastor Father Wiandigool Runsab stressed on the importance of the mother tongue by quoting the popular saying ‘When the language dies, so does the culture.’

Fr Runsab urged the parents to take pride in teaching their children and to be effective in passing on the dialects of their forefathers.

Among the various programs organised during the week-long celebration hosted by Limbanak zone were the Kadazan Language Gospel reading for school children for multiple age groups, composition of hymns, choral singing, and traditional sports activities.

The highlights of the celebration were the gong beating and the traditional food competitions.  – SOCCOM Penampang