PHNOM PENH (EWTN News) – Cambodia’s Buddhist leadership has conferred a high honorary title on the Catholic bishop of Phnom Penh, recognizing decades of cooperation between Buddhist and Christian communities in a country where the Catholic Church remains a small minority. Bishop Olivier Schmitthaeusler, apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh, received the title “Akka Mahāupāsakabuddhasāsanūpatthambhakr,” roughly translated as “Elder Great Lay Supporter and Upholder of the Buddha’s Dispensation,” during a ceremony on June 13, 2026, at Wat Botum Vatey in the Cambodian capital. The title was conferred by Supreme Patriarch Nun Nget of Cambodia’s Mohanikaya Buddhist order and presented at a ceremony presided over by Venerable Khim Sorn, the order’s third deputy supreme patriarch. It honors Schmitthaeusler’s long involvement in educational, humanitarian, and community-development initiatives carried out in cooperation with Buddhist institutions. Speaking at the ceremony, Khim Sorn said the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia recognizes Buddhism as the state religion, but “it also guarantees complete freedom of religious belief without coercion.” The Catholic Church was nearly wiped out during the Khmer Rouge era, but since public religious life resumed in the early 1990s, it has gradually rebuilt, today numbering about 20,000 faithful across one apostolic vicariate and two apostolic prefectures.

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