By Margaret Chan Kit Yok
KUCHING — On 1 November, the Holy Trinity Church, Kenyalang, making it as a tradition celebrated the Solemnity of All Saints with Sunday School teachers and students dressed up in the costumes of their chosen saints. The choice was initiated by the rector Fr Eugeno Gocela Maglasang SDB, at the first session of the Sunday school calendar year of 2025 in preparation for the Parade of Saints with the Sunday School Children, their families and teachers.
The parish objective was to provide an avenue for families and to catechise children at an early age about the lives of the saints.
Fr Eugeno stressed that the Parade of Saints was not for show, but a learning from the children. It was to inform the congregation that the Saints are exemplary holy people and role models for the faithful, and that their diverse lives show different ways to love and follow Jesus. Their lives provide examples of perseverance and faith through trials which can be a source of inspiration for Christian living and to be motivated to strive for one’s holiness.
On this day of obligation, All Saints Day was the perfect time to pray to all these holy men and women, asking for their intercession for the conversion of sinners, so that we might all become saints.
The Saints that marched in were the Saints from the Chinese stream at the Sunset Mass on 31 October 2025 celebrated by Fr Delphin Ndungu, SDB, while the English/BM stream participated in the evening Mass on 1 November 2025, celebrated by Fr Eugeno.
St Josephine of Bakhita drew the attention with her headgear. Josephine Margaret Bakhita (1869 – 1947) was a Sudanese Catholic religious sister from the Canossians after getting her freedom from slavery serving for 50 years in Italy. She came from a happy and wealthy family in Olgossa, Sultanate of Darfur, today Sudan. Before she was nine, she was kidnapped and sold into slavery. She was beatified on 17 May 1992 and canonised in 2000 by Pope John Paul II as the first female black Catholic Saint in the modern era. Her feast day is 8 February as the patron saint of victims of human trafficking.
