Renovating Our Churches? Quite the Reverse!

Renovating Our Churches? Quite the Reverse!

Mangaluru: Five years ago, the parish of Bejai celebrated its centenary. To mark the occasion the parish council sanctioned funds for the erection of a thick cemetery wall that in fact badly disfigured the appearance of this beautiful cemetery. The parish of Bejai was quite unique in that its cemetery formed part of the approach to the church – and parishioners on their way to mass, or on their return, would pause along the pathway at the tombstones of their loved ones, with a few words of silent prayer. These tombstones, once directly in the line of sight of the church (as was virtually required by Catholic practice), are now blocked by the ugly wall that is more appropriate for a jail than a place of prayer. And the cemetery as a whole, once very meticulously maintained, is now overgrown with wild plants, and garbage continually accumulates especially on the inner side of the wall. After all, what cannot be seen from the church requires no maintenance.

Five years have elapsed since the centenary – and the church finds itself once again blessed with surplus funds (in this case a grant by the government minorities’ commission). Somebody in the parish council has proposed the wonderful idea of restoring the flooring – and in the process uprooting all the memorial slabs of the distinguished parishioners of the early church. I find this proposal so repugnant that it will not suffice for me to register a protest with the parish priest. It is necessary for me to express my thoughts and share them with the community at large.

Interred within the church are my great-grandfather Joseph Lobo Prabhu, his wife Joanna, their four sons George, Raymond, Paschal and Boniface, and their wives, as well as several members of the next generation – including my own father who died in 1971 shortly before the practice of intra-church burials was discontinued. My great-grandfather Joseph Lobo Prabhu was the donor of the site of a sizeable portion of what the church owns today; his four sons and their wives were also major benefactors to the parish throughout their lifetimes.

It was in the late 19th century that Joseph Lobo Prabhu erected a chapel on his own property, and at his own expense, for the benefit of the Catholic population of the area. This is clearly noted in the “History of the Diocese of Mangaluru”, written by Fr John Moore, S.J., in the early 20th century. The chapel was situated in the front half of the area now occupied by the parish church. When Joseph’s wife Joanna – a sister of Lawrence Lobo, advocate, builder of “Nandigudda House”, one of the few traditional stately homes of Mangaluru that is still in existence – died at the young age of 45 in 1889, she was buried directly beneath the chapel altar. Joseph Lobo lived to be an octogenarian; when he died in 1921, he was buried next to his wife beneath the chapel altar.

In the 1930s, during the tenure of Fr. Antony A.E. Colaco as parish priest, more land was acquired (behind the old chapel) and the church was enlarged, the altar being shifted further back. The tombstones of Joseph and Joanna Lobo were now positioned in the middle of the new church – and members of other prominent families were interred closer to the altar. Much later, in the 1970s, under the tenure of Fr Robert Pinto as parish priest, a decision was taken to move all memorial slabs that were situated in the central aisle of the church – and those of Joseph and Joanna Lobo were relegated under the benches. But they remain intact to this day – and so to do the memorial slabs of nearly a hundred other parishioners, many of whom were benefactors of the church.

And now, the parish council is proposing to eradicate them all at one go. The reason officially put forward is that the 100-year-old flooring is in need of refurbishment.

I would like to draw a parallel here. The flooring of Westminster Abbey, London, is probably over 500 years old, but no Englishman in his right mind would dare to suggest that it be uprooted along with the memorial slabs to the eminent persons buried there. It is only in our home town of Mangaluru– the “Rome of the East” – that our clergy and parish council members get these wonderful ideas.

Just for the record, the flooring of Bejai Church may be nearly a hundred years old, but it is still in pretty good condition as the building materials used in those days were designed to last. Not so today. If the flooring in the church is laid a new, it may glitter for a year or two, but in all probability, after the passage of a decade its condition is likely to be a lot worse than the 100-year-old flooring is today.

Indeed, we should be aware of this from painful experience. At Bendore, Urwa and Valencia, the memorial slabs were uprooted in the process of floor refurbishment, and replaced by a brief inscription of the names of the persons buried. The present condition of the flooring in these churches is such that almost all these inscriptions are fading – some have faded altogether. And but for the fact that I had made a note of all the original memorial slabs back in the 1990’s when I had just commenced this project of genealogical research, it would have been next to impossible for me to identify all the persons buried within the church. This identification is important to me as I am currently in the process of bringing out a book entitled “Catholic Heritage Tombstones of Mangalore”, wherein all the major tombstones in the churches and cemeteries of Mangaluru are being catalogued – with detailed notes on the families and descendants of the deceased persons – so that these descendants will have no trouble in locating the tombstones of their departed ancestors.

But it is not merely the fading inscriptions that are the issue here. The original memorial slabs provided far more details – with carefully thought out words and lines of verse from the family members. I would like to provide one illustration. In the left aisle of Bendore church is an inscription to a child named Winifred Rose, who died at the age of 3 in 1929. No surname is mentioned. It is unlikely that even her own nieces and nephews would recognize the name if they were to see the fading inscription today. But how different would it have been had the original memorial slab been preserved wherein she was entered as the beloved daughter of John and Letitia Rego (with their verse of tribute)?

Yes, each memorial slab in our churches and each monument in our cemeteries forms part of our heritage, each tombstone an important link with our past. The inscription on each tombstone has a story to tell. Time and tide no doubt have a role to play in the degeneration of tombstones exposed to the elements over the course of decades, but deliberate razing of these monuments cannot be ascribed to the ravages of time and tide. The uprooting of slabs in churches for no purpose other than to refurbish the flooring is, in my opinion, tantamount to . . . (the word I have in mind is nine letters in length, begins with a ‘v’ and ends with an ‘m’).

Having said this, I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the management of the Codialbail Chapel for their excellent job of redecoration without the slightest damage to any of the historic slabs.

I could pursue this topic endlessly. In conclusion I would like to say that if despite my protests the parish council of Bejai is determined to go ahead with this project of desecration, my only request is that each and every memorial slab be carefully preserved. I would be happy to donate a portion of my ancestral property for a memorial to my great-grandfather Joseph Lobo Prabhu, the donor of the original site of Bejai Church – and, space permitting, would be happy if all the slabs in the church could be transferred intact to the memorial (I would of course have to seek the approval of my sister and brother, who are co-owners of our ancestral property). We live in an era where real estate is valued in terms of crores – but the memorial slabs in the churches cannot be valued in crores or even billions. Each and every one is priceless.

About Author:

Michael Lobo (born 12 September 1953) is an Indian scientist, writer, and genealogist. He is the author of three self-published books on the Catholic community in Mangalore, India. He studied at Montfort High School in Yercaud, Tamil Nadu, and graduated from St. Aloysius College.[3] In 1975, he was one of the “National-A” level chess players in the country, which put him among India’s top 20 chess players. In 1982, he obtained a PhD from IISc Bangalore, with a degree in Applied Mathematics. His doctoral thesis on Transonic Aerodynamics earned him the “Young Scientist Award” from the Indian National Science Academy (INSA). In 1982, he earned a PhD in aerodynamics mathematics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, receiving the 1983 Young Scientist Award from Indian National Science Academy.

In 1984, Lobo moved to England where he entered the Cranfield Institute of Technology on a Commonwealth Scholarship, eventually becoming a faculty member. He retrurned back to mangaluru in 1993, and from 1994–95, Lobo was involved, on a full-time basis, on a research project on the history and genealogy of the Catholic community of Mangalore. He copied almost every 19th century baptismal, marriage and death record he could locate at Rosario Cathedral and Milagres Church, cataloguing them according to surnames. Lobo initially experienced difficulties in the project since only the baptismal registers were maintained in reasonably good condition, while large sections of the marriage and death registers were missing, and it was not feasible to build the genealogy of any family on the basis of baptismal records alone.

Lobo has self-published three offshoots on the subject: Mangaloreans Worldwide – An International Directory (1999), Distinguished Mangalorean Catholics 1800–2000 – A Historico-Biographical Survey of the Mangalorean Catholic Community (2000), and The Mangalorean Catholic Community – A Professional History / Directory (2002). His encyclopedia covers more than a thousand families and is being continually updated with names and records of new families. He claims that the Mangalorean Catholic community has the distinction of being the only community in the world to possess its own genealogical encyclopedia.

Lobo has also authored two books on music entitled A Hundred Pages of Classics, Opera and Popular Instrumental Pieces – A Thousand Pages of Songs with Historical Notes and its companion edition Popular Music – A Historical and Thematic Analysis, both of which were released in 2011. Other of his publications are : “Time Marching – A Step-by-step Guide to a Flow Solver”; Mangaloreans world-wide: an international directory of the Mangalorean Catholic community; Distinguished Mangalorean Catholics 1800–2000 – A Historico-Biographical Survey of the Mangalorean Catholic Community; The Mangalorean Catholic Community – A Professional History / Directory; A Hundred Pages of Classics, Opera and Popular Instrumental Pieces – A Thousand Pages of Songs with Historical Notes. 2011; Popular Music – A Historical and Thematic Analysis. 2011.

by Michael Lobo-Mangaluru
Pics by Alfie D’souza- Team Mangalorean