wfn.org | TCN: Taiwan remembers Rev. Istvan Jaschko

["Lydia Ma" <enews@pctpress.org>]

>Taiwan Church News

>2978 Edition

>March 23~29, 2009

>Taiwan remembers Rev. Istvan Jaschko

>Reported by Lin Yi-ying

>Written by Lydia Ma

Hungarian missionary Rev. Istvan Jaschko has served the sick and the  poor in Taiwan for the past few decades in ways that reminds us of  Mother Teresa. Jaschko passed away on March 17th at the age of 99.  Though a native from Hungary, Jaschko spent more than half of his  lifetime serving the poor and the developmentally-challenged in  Taiwan’s west coast and lived out God’s commands by taking  care of the “least of these”. Jaschko love and service has  made him a true Taiwanese in the hearts of the Taiwanese people.

Jaschko’s life-long motto has always been that the less a person  thinks about himself, the happier he will be. He also believed that as  long as one desires to do charity work, one will make good use of even  one dollar and use it toward charity. He lived frugally throughout his  life so that he could use all of his resources to take care of  developmentally-challenged children in Taiwan. It is reported that his  most of his underwear had gone through several alterations and he still  wore an old jacket he had with him when he left China for Taiwan in  1955.

Jaschko was born in 1911 in Hungary and graduated from Munich University  in Germany. He traveled to Hebei, China at the age of 25 to study  Chinese. It was in China that he adopted his Chinese name – Yeh  You-ken – which means “to take root from here”. He was  ordained in 1940 after graduating from a seminary in Shanghai at the age  of 27. Jaschko later opened a hospital with a bed-capacity for 100  people to treat poor peasants in Hebei with the help of the Red Cross.

After being accused of some false charges, Jaschko was sent to a labor  camp for three years before being deported from China in 1955. When he  came to Taiwan in 1955, he set up a clinic in the countryside of Chiayi  County to help the poor. In 1961, Jaschko founded a hospital to help the  poor in Chiayi.

In 1974, Jaschko was commissioned by the Jesuit Church to go and preach  in Hsinchu. However, on his way to Hsinchu, he saw many developmentally  challenged children wandering near the train station with no one to take  care of them. This experience inspired him to build an institute for  developmentally challenged children the following year in Hsinchu. The  center grew from housing 10 children in 1975 to housing more than 160  children in 2008. Jaschko founded another institute for developmentally  challenged children in the township of Kuanhsi in Hsinchu in 1983. This  center now houses over 300 children and often cooperates with local  social workers.

Jaschko has won several national awards over the years for his  humanitarian work in Taiwan. Despite these accolades, he led a frugal  lifestyle throughout his life and kept company with developmentally  challenged children during his late years. He would often play with them  even though they liked to touch his face or his white beard with their  little, dirty hands.

During his late years, Jaschko was most concerned with what would happen  to developmentally challenged children once they reached adulthood. As a  result, he began building Hua-kuang Retreat Center so that these  children would have a place to live without worries once they reached  adulthood.

Jaschko has only returned to his homeland three times throughout his  ministry. He passed away at 3:37 a.m. on March 17th. Before his death,  he had stipulated that his body would be donated to Fu Jen Catholic  University Medical School in Taipei County for research purposes. His  contribution to Taiwanese society even after taking his last breath will  be forever cherished.

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