From the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute, Berkeley, California….

Filomena Saraswati Giese, of the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute and an alum of the Jesuit School of Theology participated in a memorial service at the GTU on Wednesday, April 24, 2019 for the victims of the tragic Easter Sunday Sri Lankan bombings. 

 It was especially poignant since Filomena’s 1987 M.A. thesis at JST was titled Sannyasa in the Spirituality and Mission of Ven. Fr. Joseph Vaz, Apostle of Kanara and Sri Lanka.  She offered her refections on the Sri Lankan tragedy and the inspiration to be drawn in today’s world of religious violence, from the inter-religious story of the founding of the present day Catholic Church in Sri Lanka.

The Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California, is a consortium of eight private independent American theological schools and eleven centers and affiliates. The GTU was founded in 1962 and their students can take courses at the University of California, Berkeley. The Jesuit School of Theology (JST) in Berkeley is an affiliate of Santa Clara University (SCU), the Jesuit University in Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley, and is part of the GTU consortium of theological schools.

The Memorial was hosted by the Jesuit School of Theology, to give the theological community an opportunity to grieve and offer prayers and reflections. 

Fr. Kevin O’Brien, S.J., Dean of JST and President- elect of SCU, was joined by the heads, faculty and students of the Schools of Theology and Centers of the Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic and Dharma (Hindu) Studies affiliated to the GTU.  

The President of the GTU, Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, opened the Memorial service, reciting the Kaddish for those who died.  He spoke of the present day bombings and killings at places of sacred worship – mosques on a Friday, Jewish temples on a Saturday, and now Christian churches on their holiest of days, Easter Sunday.  He prayed for peace and comfort for the families of the victims and for inter-religious tolerance.

Mary Beth Lamb, Senior Assistant for Student Life at JST, and several others of the GTU community, offered a prayer for the Sri Lankan victims and for healing and hope for peace.   Also attending  were Munir Jawa, Founding Director of the Center for Islamic Studies, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Anthropology, and Sr. Marianne Farina CSC,  Professor of Philosophy and Theology at CIS, as well as  Dr. Rita Sherma, Director of Dharma Studies (Hindu).  Dr. Sherma expressed the grief of the GTU community at these killings and prayed for peace. 

Filomena next spoke how those Catholics killed at prayer on Easter Sunday were descendants of the converts made by St. Joseph Vaz, people who had kept their faith through one hundred and fifty years of Dutch persecution and deprivation of religious freedom.  

She outlined the history of the Catholic faith, first brought to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese in 1505 as part of their search for the spice trade and later conquest of Sri Lankan sea ports.  This was followed by the Dutch conquest of the Portuguese territories in 1656.  The Dutch were Protestant and rivals of the Portuguese for the spice trade.   They set out to suppress the Catholic Church in order to destroy all Portuguese connections in Sri Lanka.  They passed laws banning all practice of Catholicism.  They banned all priests and missionaries from entering Sri Lanka under pain of death.  Catholics caught practicing their religion and harboring priests were fined and imprisoned, even put to death.  Their political and civil rights as well as hereditary positions were taken away.   On the other hand, the Dutch offered economic and political benefits for those converting to Calvinism.  

Before long, there were no more than a few underground Catholics left.  After forty years of this rigorous persecution, a courageous Indian priest from Goa, Father Joseph Vaz, smuggled himself, dressed as a coolie, into Sri Lanka and set about re-establishing the Catholic Church.  

At this painful time of inter-religious violence, Filomena brought home to those gathered, how the protection of the Buddhist King of Kandy and the help of people of other faiths made it possible for the Catholic Church to be re-built by St. Joseph Vaz:

•      Vaz spent two years in Jaffna where the Dutch were constantly trying to capture him, hidden by his underground Catholics.  They decided to take him to the Buddhist kingdom of Kandy where they thought he would be safe from the Dutch.  Initially, he was captured by the soldiers of its Buddhist king as a spy.  But King Vimaldharma Surya II of Kandy observed that he was indeed a great saint without political and material ties.  He released him from prison and gave him his protection, allowing him freedom to preach and build churches. 

•        Even in Kandy, there were plots to have him banished from the kingdom of Kandy.  On one occasion, he was accused of drinking cow’s blood at Communion, a violation of the Hindu queen’s beliefs.  It was the Muslim physician of the King who intervened on his behalf and saved him from banishment and certain capture by the Dutch.  

Many in the audience, composed of people of so many religious faiths, agreed that such examples of inter religious love and support show that peace among people of different religions is entirely possible.

Filomena added that by a tragic coincidence, the day of the Sri Lankan massacres, April 21, was the 368th birthday of St. Joseph Vaz born in Goa, India on that day in 1651.  

In a final prayer for the victims, JST doctoral student Fr. Louis Leveil S.J. from India and Filomena recited the Lord’s Prayer in Sinhala, the majority language of Sri Lanka.

 The Memorial concluded with the tolling of the JST bells nine times by Paul Kircher, Assistant Dean of Students at JST, in memory of the approximately 300 Sri Lankan Christians and non-Christians, as well as tourists, killed in the bombings. 

Posted by George J. Pinto & Olvin Veigas, SJ of Joseph Naik Vaz Institute.

Friday, April 26, 2019

www.josephnaikvaz.org