Bernard Ba of St. Rita Parish, Lowell, is pictured in the parish's hall, Jan. 26. Pilot photo/Wes Cipolla
LOWELL -- When he was a parishioner at St. Rose of Lima in Chelsea, there was one thing Bernard Ba wanted to know from his pastor: The meaning of the phrase "I'll kick your ass."
Ba was a newcomer to Massachusetts. A native of Cambodia, he had spent three years on the brink of starvation in a Khmer Rouge concentration camp. Both of his grandfathers, four of his 12 siblings, and his two-week-old son were killed. After a stay in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp, he was brought to Massachusetts with the help of Sister of St. Joseph Eustace Caggiano, known as "the saint of the South End" for her work with immigrants and refugees.
The Archdiocese of Boston found Ba, his wife Maria, whom he met in the refugee camp, and their infant son housing in Chelsea, where there was a growing Cambodian community at St. Rose of Lima. Ba received a stipend of $375 a month, not enough to afford disposable diapers for his son. Maria had to wash and reuse a single cloth over and over again for her son to wear. Deacon John McDonough of My Brother's Keeper found Ba a job at a restaurant at Logan Airport. Ba, who spoke little English, was a frequent target of bullying from his coworkers. One of them threatened to "kick Ba's ass."
"Father, what's that word mean?" Ba asked his pastor.
The pastor explained that it was a bad thing. The next day, when Ba's coworkers continued to harass him, he told them: "I will pray for you."
Ba, 68, has had to forgive many times in his life. He forgave the cruelty of his coworkers in the restaurant, just like he forgave the Khmer Rouge soldiers who beat him to the brink of death with bamboo clubs.
"I always remember, in the Bible, it says, let God fight the battle for you," Ba told The Pilot in the parish hall of St. Rita in Lowell on Jan. 26. "Whoever hurt you, whoever did any harm, let God fight the battle for you. That's all I believe."
St. Rita is the only Cambodian parish in the Archdiocese of Boston. A Jesuit priest from South Korea celebrates Mass in Khmer every Sunday. Ba comes all the way from Providence to attend. He is considered the father of St. Rita's Cambodian community. He helped organize the Khmer-language Masses and music ministry, and is a catechist, just like he was at St. Rose of Lima when Cambodian refugees first came to Chelsea. Every year, he helps St. Rita raise funds for scholarships and school uniforms for children in Cambodia. He wants to bring his fellow Cambodian Catholics to church, but it's hard because many of them work on the weekends.
"It's hard right now for people to get educated about, get to know God," he said. "But I talk a little bit, you know. I communicate with them on the phone. Sometimes we need to do something. We call, we contact each other. I try to keep them in faith."
For his decades of service to the Cambodian Catholic community of eastern Massachusetts, Ba was one of 151 people to receive Cheverus Awards in 2023. The archdiocesan awards, named after the first bishop of Boston, honor those who have dedicated their lives to the church. Ba was excited and grateful when Father Richard Clancy, pastor of St. Rita and the one who nominated Ba for the award, told him he had received it.
"I just do the work for God," he said. "I know that God will reward me, so I already got a reward already."
"He's a tremendous leader," Father Clancy told The Pilot on Jan. 6. "He'll do anything for the church, and he has for years. He is really just a holy man and an example of what a Christian husband and father is all about. He's an amazing person."
Ba was a fourth-generation Catholic, born in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. He is the fourth of 13 children. His father served in the Cambodian military, and his mother was a housewife. Catholics have always been a small minority in Cambodia, but there are more now than before the Khmer Rouge took power. Ba was an altar boy and helped clean the church. At age 10, he began working part-time jobs to support his family. When he grew up, he wanted to become a priest.
"We lived in a very low, below-middle-class, kind of poor family, because my father was military," he said. "His income was just enough for a bag of rice and not able to support all of us."
To ease his parents' burden, his grandmother took him and several of his siblings to live with her near the border with Thailand. When Phnom Penh fell to Khmer Rouge forces on April 17, 1975, the Bas were forced to evacuate their village. Ba would not see his village or much of his family again for almost four years.
"It was a very tough time for us," he said.
With supplies for three days, Ba, his grandmother, and siblings were marched to a forced labor camp. Anyone refusing or attempting to flee to Thailand was shot.
"They just wanted to push us away," Ba said. "And that was how people started to die."
The camp was plagued by starvation, with only the harvest season of December and January offering minor relief. Ba survived on banana skins and grain scraps, walking miles for water each day. The Khmer Rouge wanted to collectivize the country's economy and create an agricultural society. Educated professionals who refused to become farmers were killed.
"I don't understand at all," Ba said. "If they are Vietnamese, they kill our own people. We understand because we are a different nation, but this is our nation."
Ba's girlfriend at the time bore a son who starved to death two weeks after birth because his mother's malnutrition prevented her from producing milk. Despite begging the camp's leaders for food, they received only a meager portion of rice from a guard.
"I don't have any energy to bury my kid," Ba recalled. "Even about two feet down, I couldn't. I have no energy to dig a grave."
All religions were violently persecuted by the regime. There was no way for Ba to attend Mass or practice his faith. There were no calendars or clocks, so Ba had to count the days to know when it was Christmas, Easter, or any other holy day. He was particularly devoted to his namesake St. Bernard because he served the poor.
Meanwhile, he saw people dying in the streets almost every day. His older brother was shot for stealing a bowl of rice, his 13-year-old sister was raped and murdered by soldiers, and his five-year-old brother starved to death.
"Without God, I wouldn't make it," he said.
Not everyone in the camp was cruel. He once survived a brutal beating by soldiers because a woman in the kitchen told them it was time for lunch. They stopped attacking Ba and went to eat, and he followed them.
Once, when he was doubled over from hunger pains, a woman offered him a bowl of rice.
"That day, the rice became ... heavenly food, because it tastes so good when you're so hungry," he said. "It's so delicious. I almost ate the whole plate."
He remembered a time when his entire body was "swollen like an elephant" to the point that he couldn't walk without a cane. He believed so strongly he would die that he knelt down and promised God that if he survived, he would dedicate his entire life to serving him and the poor.
"So God took me away and brought me to the United States," he said. "Forty-three years in May. Two things that I do my whole life here: Help for God and help for the poor."
After the Khmer Rouge was overthrown, the U.S. offered to sponsor Ba and his relatives because his father was in the Cambodian military. He landed in San Francisco on May 30, 1982.
"The day that I leaned my foot at the airport, got out of the airplane and stepped on the airport, I said 'Thank God. You gave me a new life,'" he said.
His case was taken up by a Lutheran church, which would have taken him to Arizona.
"God, I don't want to go to Lutheran church," he prayed.
He then discovered Sister Eustace, who offered to take him to Chelsea.
"Oh my God," he remembered. "I heard that, I jumped so high. God answered me again."
In Massachusetts, Ba got a job at Boston Scientific and had three more children with Maria. He is now retired. Sometimes, he still shakes and has nightmares. Sometimes, when he lies in bed, he imagines he's still sleeping on a dirt floor in the camp. He still cannot fully lift his leg due to his injuries.
"See how weak is the body," he said.
Despite everything he has endured, Ba considers himself lucky.
"Normally, when you're suffering, people lose faith," he said. "Sometimes they blame God for why it happened. Actually, for me, there are so many miracles in my life. Every time I prayed, God answered my prayer, and God saved me from that pain and suffering. And then I told all the people that there is God, okay? You need to find God. You have to get to know Jesus first, because he is the one that can help you live better even through your struggle. Even though you're suffering in pain, he's with you."