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* * * 2006 ANNUAL GOANETTERS MEET - GOA * * *
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WHERE: Foodland Cafe - Miramar Residency - Miramar, Goa
WHEN: December 21, 2006 @ 4:00pm
More info:
http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2006-December/051412.html
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REJOICE IN UNITY
By Valmiki Faleiro
We checked some oddities between Goa and her patron saint, St. Francis Xavier
(SFX),
last week. In his 10 years in the East, SFX spent the least time in Goa, yet
willed that his
mortal remains stay here. The ‘greatest missionary of modern times’ converted
hardly
anybody in Goa, yet his brother-Jesuits who followed Christianized large parts
of Goa.
A tiny seed produces a big tree. This particular seed was a genius: SFX devised
a
strategy, four and a half centuries ago, to keep newly evangelized places
going, and
growing, on their own steam -- by involving local clergy and lay associates in
active
mission work. No wonder Goa’s only extant order of missionary priests, the
Pilar Society,
was dedicated to SFX, even if founded three and half centuries after his death.
I confess to a special affection for the ‘Society of Missionaries of St.
Francis Xavier’
a.k.a. Pilar Society. Can’t say why. Perhaps because it gave Goa one of her two
candidates for sainthood, the Ven. Fr. Agnelo de Souza. Perhaps because it
produced
one of India’s youngest bishops, Bishop Alex Dias of the Andaman & Nicobar
Islands.
Perhaps because two of my close relatives, Frs. Cosme Costa and Galdino
Monteiro,
belong to Pilar. Perhaps because the Pilar hillock provides the most majestic
view from
the air in Goa. But most certainly because the Pilar priests have been
rendering yeoman
service, especially among the poor, in their mission stations across India.
Last week -- and significantly, on December 2, eve of SFX’s traditional feast
day -- a long
festering Pilar wound, was finally healed. A schism, like a bitter battle
between brothers,
was at last resolved. The Church in India so rejoiced that no less than the
Papal Nuncio
presided over a rare ‘Reconciliatory Mass’ at Pilar, with a galaxy of Bishops
and
Archbishops bearing witness to the momentous event.
Like many things in life, both Pilar and that unfortunate schism are seeped in
irony. Let’s
sample some.
Pilar was born 26 September 1887, not in Pilar, but at Agonda, in Goa’s
southernmost
Canacona taluka. Fr. Bento Martins, who founded the Society, hailed neither
from Pilar
nor from Agonda, but from Orlim in Salcete. Pilar recorded a meteoric streak
for about
50 years, and then went almost defunct. By 1939, Fr. Baltazar Gomes was reduced
to a
one-man ‘Society.’
Eight years before, two young diocesan seminarians, Conceicao Rodrigues and
Francisco Jassu Sequeira, while praying at the feet of SFX in Old Goa, aspired
to launch
a new missionary order. Same year, 1931, they founded a "Xavierian League" of
like-
minded companions. After ordination, they approached the Patriarch with their
idea. The
latter suggested that they instead join Pilar, by now in the throes of sure
demise.
Fr. Conceicao and Fr. Francisco went by the Patriarch’s idea and, together with
three
other priests and two Brothers, joined Pilar on 2nd July 1939. The Society
never looked
back since. At that critical point in Pilar’s history, few might have
remembered the words
of her saintly and most famous confrere, Fr. Agnelo: "Don’t be afraid. The
Society is not
going to die. The finger of God is here," he had said, quite prophetically.
Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues, who hailed from Betalbatim, was widely regarded as an
intelligent man: of rare foresight, tact, and dynamism. He led the group that
resuscitated
Pilar. But, in 1978, also led a revolt that fractured the mother Society.
That’s the last of
Pilar’s ironies.
Padre Conceicao and his "Agnel Ashram Fathers" were go-getters. They dug out
means
to realise their ends. When from Bandra’s Bandstand, they attempted a toehold
in Goa,
the church hoisted a ‘no welcome’ signal. H.M. Patel, India’s Home Minister
under
Morarji Desai, inaugurated Agnelganv on the Nuvem-Verna border ... who else
could
ensure a hassle-free entry? (That 1978 toehold is today a complex of
multi-level and
diverse educational streams, with legitimate claims to excellence.) When the
Janata
Party collapsed and Congress returned to power, Fr. Conceicao was at equal ease
with
Indira Gandhi and after her, with Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao. He
secured
land grants from the Union and State governments to establish impressive
engineering
college complexes in New Bombay, Delhi. Padre Conceicao and his band, as
priests on
a mission, blazed a new trail.
But the schism had pained many a Goan Catholic heart. Several well-meaning Goans
had attempted reconciliation. Froilano Machado, then Speaker of the Goa
Legislative
Assembly, tried hard and sincerely. Like Machado, others too failed. The blocks
were
denser than wartime bomb shelters.
All’s well that ends well. Differences ironed out. Bitterness buried. Pilar is
one again.
Goa rejoices. In unity, they shall stand. And last. (ENDS)
The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at:
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330
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The above article appeared in the December 10, 2006 edition of the HERALD, Goa
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