Well, without having read the article, I had labelled Fr. Desmond (didnt know the short form) - bold, charismatic, & direct in speech - & that was when I was in my teens so he must have been in his 30's then. & he used to pronounce his words differently from the rest of us. So yeh Patsy, your use of the word "outspoken" & the rest of the stuff in the article about "direct without mincing words" is what got to some of us. & in previous years, guess most would have thought of him as a "rebel", "critical of the Church" etc. Well he did what he wanted to do, so my salaams. Didnt know he had been around the world, but then I lost track. And yeh I do remember his dad too - Mr. Hubert? He officiated at one of the masses in January 2016 in our Saligao Church when we were in Goa, guess that was my last glimpse of him & we commented on his interesting sermon. May his soul rest in peace. Our condolences to all members of his family. Annette PS: Quite a coincidence as we got a message on the mobile about his demise after his suffering from a heart attack, whilst we were at mass, so we got a chance to pray for his soul right then. Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 16:21:09 -0400 Subject: Re: [SALIGAONET] OBIT: Demi -- A Liberal, Caring and Justice-Driven Face of Goan Christianity From: [email protected] To: [email protected]
Unfortunately, I did not have the privilege of knowing Fr. Demi as well as many of you did. However, I've always heard lots of good stuff about him. Priests like him are hard to come by...outspoken, dynamic and always striving to do the right thing. He will, undoubtedly, be greatly missed by many...especially those who worked with him and knew him well. Patsy Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا <[email protected]> wrote: A Liberal, Caring and Justice-Driven Face of Goan Christianity FN Someone reading him online once accused Desmond de Sousa of being an "angry young priest", possibly even a young upstart whowas critical of the Church in Goa. But Demi, as he was knownto his friends, clarified, without missing the irony: "Let meassure one and all, I'm 73 years old this September [2012],54 years a Redemptorist and 46 years a priest.... Among mymany illustrious students who have become my superiors overthe years are bishops, including the present Archbishop ofGoa, with whom I enjoy a very cordial relationship."[http://bit.ly/1ZZ8xAg] Demi came from a priviledged background, yet he spoke boldlyand without mincing words -- like the prophets of old --against injustice and for the poor. His family has played aprominent role in village affairs in Saligao (I remember the'Saligao Bulletin' sold for 15 paise in the 1960s and a bookcalled *Floreata Saligao* authored by his septuagenarian dadC. Hubert de Souza). And yet he was one of the few priests atthe frontlines of the ramponkar agitation in the 1970s in Goa. If you saw him cycling along the humid roads between Porvorimand Saligao (as he did till a few years back), you wouldhardly guess that he had been the globe-trotting ExecutiveSecretary of the Office of Human Development (OHD) of theFederation of Asian Bishops (FABC) for over 10 years duringthe 1980s and co-ordinated the Asia-Pacific national officesof Caritas Internationalis. Demi passed away suddenly and without any prolongued illness on May 14, 2016, on the operating table, during emergency angioplasty, after suffering a massive heart attack just a few hours earlier. "Those of us who knew him well and met him often are in shock at how suddenly and unexpectedly it all happened," wrote Mario Mascarenhas, activist who had been an associate of Demi decades ago. He was a friendly, concerned, helpful and outspoken man. Whenhe had something to say even about the Church, he said itwithout mincingi words; you would scarcely guess that thecriticism came from a man of the cloth. In a 2012 article hewrote for Goanet Reader [http://bit.ly/1TdilrN], titled 'TheChallenge to the Church in Goa: Revivalism or Renewal?' FrDesmond de Sousa CSsr acknowledged the colonial roots of theGoan church and wrote: ...The clergy generally find it extremely difficult to accept a more participative, co-responsible and socially committed Church with the laity.... The laity however, are deeply divided about the pace and direction of change that renewal demands. A paradigm shift in faith formation is needed. They need a more inductive reflection on the daily realities of life to discover the challenge of God acting within these realities, rather than the traditional deductive process of learning abstract truths of faith by heart. ...Some of the more enlightened laity support and participate in the renewal process as a genuine and necessary expression of the Catholic Church in Goa. But the vast majority are caught up in the revivalist spiritual awakening that is sweeping Goa. ...Will the Church in Goa continue to operate as a decrepit, colonial Church or become transformed into a vibrant, indigenous Church? Renewal of the Church or Revivalism in the Church -- that is the question. The caliber of the Church's leadership will be severely tested by the question of whose perspective will ultimately triumph! He worked at the grassroots and on picket lines, and heunderstood it. Elsewhere, Demi narrates his experiences inmeeting the young Matanhy Saldanha, theactivist-turned-politician who ironically played a crucialrole in helping the BJP return to power in Goa in 2012. Hesays: "In the early 1970s during a retreat to collegestudents in Belgaum, I first met this rather shy, aloof,silent 20 plus-year-old, who immediately struck me asdifferent. His friends made fun of him because he had dreamsof entering politics when he returned to Goa. Which20-year-old is so focused in life?" "Immediately I recognized his rather unusual name whenreading the news about the leader of the agitation againstZuari Agro Chemicals polluting the land and then the seaaround Velsao. In 1975, when I was transferred to Goa, I madeit a point to renew our acquaintance. By 1977-78, I washeavily involved with him in the Ramponcar agitation."[http://bit.ly/1WBQnq7] Some time around 1980, Fr Demi motivated a group of abouthalf-a-dozen young nurses, many if not all trained at theprestigious St Martha's of Bangalore known for creatingnurses with a commitment. He got them to take their skills tothe rural area of Pernem in northernmost Goa. In those times,health care facilities were even more unequally spread outover Goa, and transport was not easy to come by either. Some of these nurses still recall the times they put inthere. Their mission was not to push for religiousconversions, which Christians often get accused with intoday's Indian discourse, but to take succour to the poor. Writes Sr Dorothy pbvm from Patna: "In his later years, beingat Porvorim, Goa, he was disturbed with influx of young womenas domestic help from a remote district of Odisha, Gajapati.So passionate was he about this phenomenon that he began toexplore the reason for it. He personally visited Gajapti andfound out that there was utter poverty in the villages whichforced the parents to send their daughters for work in otherparts of the country and the involvement of agents intrafficking women and girls to the cities. With the help ofa religious sister he began to organize the women who werebrought to Goa and look into the menace of trafficking. Hebegan to rescue young women and put in place a system at boththe entry and destination points to check trafficking." He held a Master's degree in Social Work, and taught ChurchHistory, Social Analysis and Catholic Social Teaching. In the 1990s, he became the Executive Secretary of theEcumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism (ECTWT), nowcalled Ecumenical Coalition on Tourism (ECOT), a coalition ofcontinental Catholic and Protestant churches. During histenure he participated in the setting up of ECPAT, formerlyknown as the global network, campaigning to End ChildrenProstitution in Asian Tourism, now renamed End ChildProstitution and Trafficking. Interestingly, the Goa government and some in the tourism trade saw the protests in Goa of the 1980s as a result of conspiracies seeded by touristic rivals like Sri Lanka or Malaysia. The more likely inspiration, at least in part, came from elsewhere. It was men like Demi whose work helped concerned citizens in Goa to understand what Protestant groups were doing to study and cope with the impact of modern mass tourism (including on the environmental and economic fronts), rather than just see it from a moralistic perspective alone. He was a friend of Goanet too, as a search for his nameonline would show. Most readily he would come along for ourmeetings and share his insights, catching our attention withinteresting stories and experiences. Some years back, notlong ago, he was at the annual Goanetters meet. He offered aperspective to counter the tendency of seeing the Goan pastwith rose tinted glasses. This is how I reported what he had said then: Redemptorist FR. DESMOND de SOUSA gave another take on "the past was better" logic that one often hears about Goa. Their family lived in Bombay and "we used to hate to come to Goa", he pointed out. "There were two Customs posts to cross, at Castle Rock and Collem. The old carreira took one from Collem right home. Saligao of course had no electricity." He said a rupee coin pressed into the palm of the Customs cleared everything, something he noticed in his childhood days. He came to Goa as a young priest in 1969. "It was still very difficult, because things were very traditional. In society. And in the Church. Everybody wanted to poke their nose and tell you how to run your life in a certain way, because that was how it was done in the past." But after his 1969-71 stint, he returned in 1975, only to see Goa with new eyes. "I saw it as a challenge then. There were youth movements taking place, and protest movements. We really began to hope that people's power would change things in Goa," he said. "I am still hopeful." "The problem with people's power is that it comes up only in fits and starts, when the people are fighting some issue, or have their backs to the wall." After 13 years as the secretary to the Asian Bishops Conference, he visited almost "every country in the world". Giving the example of the Cook Islands, the largely-Maori 15 small islands that comprise the "self-governing parliamentary democracy in free association with New Zealand", he pointed out that their population is below 20,000 (probably more earlier). He says when he asked students there how big they thought India was, they felt it could be 50,000 or maybe 100,000 inhabitants strong. "If you think small, you're going to see everything else as small," he suggested. He said other countries often "seemed to have a better impression of us Indians rather than what we have of ourselves." He wanted to come back home, he said, because he was tired of being termed an outsider everywhere. DeSouza argued the challenges faced here is something many other countries had gone through "till a time comes when (it is no longer acceptable and) things start working out and change for the better takes place". "I've eaten raw fish, snake and what not in different parts of the world I've been to," he said, suggesting that change is the key to surviving and understanding others. "I've eaten everything except balut, in the Philippines," de Souza mentioned. (A balut is a fertilized duck or chicken egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell.) He dramatically narrated how he just couldn't stomach the idea. One day, at a bishop's breakfast table, he was asked how he managed to cope with balut, also commonly sold as streetfood in the Philippines. "I told him I didn't eat it. Till the bishop said I just had!" It was a battle to resist throwing up on the spot! This is a video of Demi which I just noticed today, quitelike him, making very deep points packaged in seemingly lightcomments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVsZEDfcFA You don't feel sad when someone like Demi passes away. Youfeel privledged for having known the man! ### Rev Fr Desmond de Sousa C.Ss.R (Porvorim/Saligao) b.27-07-1939 d. 14-05-2016. Beloved son of late Hubert andlate Julia (nee Saldanha). Brother/brother-in-law of NevilleJoseph (Joey)/Mena; Thelma/late Maurice Britto; Greta/lateRaymond Noronha, a great uncle and friend. Passed awaysuddenly on the 14th of May 2016. Body will be brought to thehouse of the Redemptorist Fathers in Alto Porvorim at 11 amon Tuesday 17th of May 2016 and will be taken at 3.30 pm toOur Lady of Mae de Deus Church Saligao, for the EucharistCelebration and last rites at 4.30 pm. -- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ _/ Frederick Noronha http://about.me/noronhafrederick http://goa1556.in _/ P +91-832-2409490 M 9822122436 Twitter @fn Fcbk:fredericknoronha _/ Hear Goa,1556 shared audio content at https://archive.org/details/goa1556 _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ -- -- Saligao-Net is at http://groups.google.com/group/saligao-net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe email [email protected] --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Saligao-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- Saligao-Net is at http://groups.google.com/group/saligao-net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe email [email protected] --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Saligao-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- Saligao-Net is at http://groups.google.com/group/saligao-net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe email [email protected] --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Saligao-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
