Father Hugh Fonseca

One of six children from Mumbai, I have been a priest for 33 years now. For all the years that I have been a priest, I have believed in getting involved with the problems of the people, in the real life issues that matter.

From 1975 until 1983, I was at the St Pius seminary, Goregaon (Mumbai), with Fr Raymond, his brother, Fr Alvyn and Fr. Alex Carvalho. It was while we worked there that ideas began to take shape and move in a particular direction. In 1980, when we had the consultation for priests, we started the social justice cells.

This work continued as we went into the parishes. I was in the Kurla parish for six years but I lived and worked in Saki Naka. Saki Naka was a very important experience for me as the parish was being controlled by a group of people, Catholics, who were under the sway of slumlords. Over a five-year period, we managed to get it out of the hands of the vested interests. Ultimately people began to take charge of their own lives. 

We were, the four of us, idealistic, with strong notions of what faith should be and the role it should play in people’s lives. This churning and reflection within us was against the solely ritualistic faith that was prevalent at the time. The result of this reflection was a paper that we came out with to nudge the Church in the direction that we were going. It was titled, ‘The Faith that has Justice’.

We then took up two parishes, the Jeri Meri and Saki Naka parishes, as experiments; the result was the Jagruti Kendra established in 1989. All four of us worked as a team. There was the handa morcha that we took out to the ward office to protest on the question of water; we protested the shabby collection and depositing of garbage. Each protest sent out a deep inner message to people to take charge of their lives, not to feel helpless and insecure and empower themselves to get what is their due.

In the beginning there was resistance, too, to such a novel approach. At one meeting in Saki Naka where parish counsellors were present, vested interests who had controlled affairs for too long tried to show their strength. They threatened to attack me. That was a real test for the local population. When all of them stood up refused to be cowed down, stood around to protect me, that was the first public show of our victory. 

Until then, no one had publicly challenged the authority of the vested interests. This was during 1992 and 1993. Thereafter, I was in Orlem, Malad, another suburb where I spent six years. There, too, a powerful local group, VOTE (Voice of the People Exploited), emerged. 

The incident that initially motivated people was the demolition of a chapel at Srilankapada. This became an incident to rally against the local corporation officials, the Shiv Sena corporators and to establish healthy links with the police. The local people took up the initial mobilisation and what we see now is the existence of a strong voice of the laity in Malad. There is the VOTE group, there is also the Lourdes Community Centre that contributes to community service and health works in the area.

Now at Borivli, we are, laity and church together, involved in firming up yet another group, HELP. Here also the aim is to work together on issues that concern all of us, be it attacks on minorities or broader human rights issues. 

As a priest, I have always believed that we must guide persons to take control of their lives and to fight for justice. When we began as priests, there was more emphasis on the spiritual and the ritualistic. Today, I see that spirituality lies in working against injustices, for truth. Without this emphasis what use is ritualistic faith alone?

The Church has played a historic role in this country providing education, health and other services. But it is a huge institution that gets tired and lumbers along. It, too needs to be nudged with new ideas, new pushes. We need to look beyond formal education, look at the question of values, civic values, values concerning justice, becoming good and responsive citizens.

In the broadest possible sense, following as we are the work of Christ, we must be prepared to think beyond ourselves, look at the misery and poverty around and do something about it. Like other institutions, the Church here and elsewhere has had aberrations, reflecting the concerns of only the powerful and the rich, the influential, echoing the caste biases that prevail. Yes, we have had our share of aberrations.

There were parts of India where only upper caste priests were accepted, in another case we have had a history of different castes being buried separately. This is something that violates the basic tenets of Christianity. We had one instance, in Goa, of the body of a person callously removed after burial, simply because he belonged to the ‘lower’ caste.

This happened because when the Portuguese came, there were actually mass conversions without any real change in attitude on questions of caste. In other words, your conversion did not change your attitudes. 

But having said that, there are people within the church hierarchy and the laity who are trying to make a difference.

Under the theme, “He came to set us free” (the first sermon of Christ in the synagogue) we have recently begun a movement for civic and political cells in each parish within the Mumbai diocese. Through this the conscientisation of people will happen.              

(As told to Teesta Setalvad).

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I am an MA in politics. My first appointment when I became a priest in 1975 I was in Vakola, Santacruz (E). Initially I was caught up in traditional priestly work. But slowly, faced with the realities of the world outside, I began to realise that faith has to be linked with justice. Especially, because there was little relation between what happened within the Church to was happening in society. 

I remember, for example, that while I was vice-principal of a school at Vakola, I noticed that during the first period itself, students would be trooping out of class and roaming about in the school. Two years later, when I began some community work in the slums where the youngsters lived, I realised that there were no toilets there and so, naturally, they spent the first period releasing themselves. 

A cloistered approach from the priest and parish need not get you involved in issues like these but if people are suffering outside, how can we not get involved?

This was also about the time that some four-six priests like us began reflecting on the role of the Church in the community. We used to call it a think tank. Slowly we evolved into an inspirational group concerned with making faith more relevant. This then slowly evolved into the social justice cell of Archdiocese of Bombay in 1981. Finally, a decade later, the official body of the Church accepted it and it now exists as the justice and peace commission.

The guiding principle of this mini-movement inside the Church was that people’s lives, rather than merely ritualistic faith, needs to be stressed. We got inspiration and guidance from Dominque and Nafisa, professors in social work from Andhra Pradesh –- from whom we evolved the idea of working within a community – the idea being to link faith with justice. There were four of us in this movement. My brother, Hugh Fonseca, Alex Carvalho and myself.

Initially there was scepticism from the Church, there was also resistance to work with other communities. But we were clear. That, when we are dealing with social and justice issues we have to get involved with all communities. Jeri Meri, one of our experimental parishes, was where we had a children’s group, a women’s group, a youth group. The main thrust was on the organisation of people, encouraging them to solve their own problems.

There were also difficulties with the hierarchy; but it was a new understanding of faith and action so there were bound to be questions and some friction. I recall an incident when a bishop, Bishop Bosco Pena, was quite supportive. He actually challenged me to begin work with other communities. 

So we took up this challenge, managed to work out the dynamics and succeeded. Within Mumbai we had some type of community organisations like Seva Niketan and Bandra East Community Centre. But they were not linked to the parish, they were individual centres. Here the idea was to link each parish with such a cell. 

Today this sort of idea has become part of the official mandate; it took us 10-15 years to convince the hierarchy that we need to move with the times. Now we have 35 centres all over Mumbai. (Mumbai has about 80-odd parishes).

In the recent past, with increasing attacks on democratic freedoms of different communities, it becomes even more pertinent that the Church and its units are alert to questions of justice. During the 1992-1993 communal violence in Mumbai, many men and women of the Church opened their church doors for relief and rehabilitation. Now that nuns and priests are also under consistent attack, we need to mobilise on the issue as a threat to democratic freedoms.

The fact that Christian institutions are working in education, health and other areas, with the most marginalised sections and in the context of our country this means oppressed castes, it is inevitable that our work itself comes under attack. However, these women and men of faith are not dithered; at the Seminary I meet them from all parts of the country and they are unshakeable in resolve, determined to complete their life’s mission.

A true Christian believes that it is only under threat, martyrdom and pressure that the church grows –- not necessarily quantitatively but qualitatively. So we have to carry on.

The Church, both as a link with faith and as a physical presence in the parish, has tremendous potential to be a genuine link with the people who live there. To show compassion and caring for their problems. While acceptance to this approach is not 100 per cent, it is slowly growing as the centres become successful, identify with people’s problems and attract young and fresh talent. 

Basically it boils down to this. What should faith stand for? Justice issues, real life issues or should we only concentrate on the ritualistic dimension of faith.

While this is a positive development, as in other faiths, the conservative and inward-looking traditions within Christianity are also visible. These persons with a narrow definition of faith and worship don’t see their involvement or the involvement of the Church in politics and civic life. It is growing everywhere; it is a type of spirituality, which is only concerned with personal salvation.

However all said and done, I feel that partly because of the community centres started by some of us, partly because of other pulls and pressures, lay persons increasingly feel that the Church should get involved in politics, in civic issues. These lay persons are taking the initiative. The first step is get people involved. 

(As told to Teesta Setalvad).

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