Old Goa Parish Priest Says His Parishioners Has Had Enough Of Expositions By SAR NEWS
OLD GOA, Goa (SAR NEWS) -- The parish priest of the Se Cathedral, which housed the sacred relics of Saint Francis Xavier for public veneration during the 43-day exposition here has said that his parish has had enough of expositions. The Exposition concluded on January 2.Canon Adolfo Joviano Castro Viegas, 81, parish priest of Se Cathedral here, told SAR News Jan. 2 that the exposition had hampered Christian life in his parish. He said ever since the exposition was underway, his parishioners were denied easy access to the cathedral because of security personnel. "During the exposition, my parishioners along with me were denied from holding the regular youth meetings, catechism, communion to the sick, pastoral council meetings, even Holy Hour", said Cannon Viegas. In erstwhile colony of Portuguese-India, the cannons constituted the senate, which advised the Bishop on various ecclesiastical matters. Priests were decorated as cannon, half canons, quarter canon and 5/6th canon. Quarter canons generally comprised singers in the Se Cathedral. Instead of a white cassock, Canons normally used a black gown with red buttons with a mozetta around the neck upto the elbow-level. Cannon Viegas said, he held Masses regularly at one of the chapels within the Cathedral, but his parishioners failed to turn up because security personnel restricted entry. Even the veneration of the relics were organized in such a hurry that church volunteers overseeing the relics constantly pressurized the devotees to hurry up in filing past the relics, but as they reached the donation box nobody told them to hurry, observed one Jesuit priest from Punjab. Said Maclaron de Sa, a disgruntled devotee who arrived from Nairobi, "I am appalled that the organizers hardly gave any peace for devotees coming from far away places to venerate the relic. If they wanted devotees to hurry, they ought to have asked them to hurry not just around the relics, but right out of the cathedral". Canon Viegas said that he would not last at the Cathedral for the next exposition, but expressed his hope that the local parishioners would be consulted in the organization of the exposition in the future, though he reiterated that he was averse to having such expositions. His call for an end to expositions has found favor amongst local parishioners like Josemarie Viana who lives bang opposite the Cathedral. Viana laments that exposition in recent years has turned commercial, unlike yesteryears when devotees came with faith. "Now devotees come with curiosity and link their visit to tourism, while locals are interested in the exposition because of commercial interests" he says. "Many tourists find their way to my house and defy us on our beliefs vis-a-vis the condition of Saint Xavier's relics," Vianna said. "The Church authorities now call it relics, but tourism brochures refer to Saint Xavier's remains as body. When tourists come and see the saint's body reduced to just bones, they feel cheated. Despite my explanation, in a religious way, they go away unconvinced, leaving me like an abettor in the fraud". "Tourists coming here get scandalized to see bars (during the exposition) in the vicinity of a sacred place and the open commercialization that goes on", lamented Dominica Crasta, another parishioner. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://goabooks.swiki.net * Reviews of books on Goa... and more
