'But for the oppressed freedom'? Strange statement from Fr. Ivo, and truly paradoxical in the age where the religion that he preaches is under the threat of fundamentalists and terrorists in a 'liberated' Goa.
BC He died suddenly at the tender age of 51 years, after a brief illness, on August 25 of 1958. While he was ill, he heard the National Anthem on August 2 and rose from his death-bed to salute the Indian National Flag on Dadra's Liberation Day. Then he asked that a handful of earth of his native village of Chandor, which he had fetched, be put in his grave, and breathed his last. He gave one rupee from below his pillow to his wife for his funeral rites. He died poor without leaving one pie. He devoted himself for the uplift of the masses. We find these words on his grave: "Life for him was a mission,/His daily lot a martyrdom,/Honours and wealth he sought not,/But for the oppressed freedom".
