Photos by Sandra Leung/Yaletown Photography
Clockwise, from above left: Past State Deputy Koon Ming Lau works a video camera as he and other Knights of Council 10500 livestream Mass from St. Francis Xavier Parish. • Grand Knight Ambrose Ng (left) and Isaac Mak unload meals at The Door is Open. • Past Grand Knight Christopher Chen distributes palms on Palm Sunday in the parking garage of St. Francis Xavier Church. Due to pandemic restrictions, parishioners drove to the church after a livestreamed Mass to receive holy Communion and contribute to the collection.
By serving the parish practically, the Knights are also serving the Church spiritually, said Lau, who went on to serve as grand knight of the council and later as state deputy of British Columbia. “The Knights of Columbus is a bridge between the Church and the younger generations,” Lau said. “We are in a role of evangelization — to bring the young parishioners back to the Church, especially those in university, and keep the young brothers and young families active in the parish and the local communities, so they have a sense of belonging and practicing their Catholic faith.” A GROWING COMMUNITY
Council 10500 was born in a time of transition for St. Francis Xavier. The
oldest Chinese parish in the Archdiocese of Vancouver, it was founded in a house in Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1933 and later moved to a church nearby. The parish grew throughout the 20th century, expanding its elementary school and adding a day care and a senior care home. It also opened a school for teaching English to new immigrants from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, who have arrived in Vancouver in a steady stream since the early 1990s. (Today, 20% of Vancouver’s population identifies as Chinese, and nearly 70% of Canadians of Asian heritage are first-generation immigrants.) With parish activities scattered at different addresses, then-pastor Father Aloysius Lou dreamed of uniting them in one
place. At the turn of the new millennium, his dream started coming true. The elementary school moved to a new building, and plans were made to build a church on the lot next door. In 2004, the community began celebrating Mass in the school gymnasium, and the new church opened in late 2008, exactly 75 years after the parish was first established. It was during this historic time that Council 10500 was chartered, but not without difficulty. It took Father Lou and the district deputy six months of weekly recruiting to attract enough men to start a council. Most parishioners were unfamiliar with the Order; some were unfamiliar with the very concept of a fraternal Catholic brotherhood openly M AY 2 0 2 1 B C O L U M B I A
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