“No Tom, I cannot appoint you,” Jesuit Fr. Valerian Aleu, vice-principal of St. Xavier’s College Mumbai, told me after my interview with him for a job as lecturer. I was hoping to get the job as I had not seen any other person appearing for the interview.
Seeing my bewildered look, the genial Jesuit added, “The management has decided to appoint Agnelo Menezes to that post.”
I was disappointed, to say the least. But two days later I got a call, telling me that Agnelo did not take up the job and hence I had the job. I joined the college and worked there until 2005.
Agnelo joined another college and we met while attending a refresher course for college teachers and became friends. We did our doctorate under the same guide. Aggie, as he is called by his friends and students, joined my college later. This year, he would take over as the first non-Jesuit principal of that 146-year-old prestigious institute of higher education.
It is one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in India and was awarded the highest rating by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council in 2006. Notable former students include industrialists such as Azim Premji of Wipro, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, Adi Godrej of Godrej Group, Ratanji Tata of Tatas and several jurists, writers, sports persons and cine artists.
So to head such an institution is a prestigious matter. However, the appointment should not be news for those acquainted with Aggie’s commitment to higher education and his abilities as an intellectual.
What makes it newsworthy is that he is a former Jesuit. At the time of my interview in 1989 he was a Jesuit and that is why they had decided to appoint him. However, a day after my interview Aggie left the Society of Jesus. I too am a former Jesuit belonging to Patna province. Fr. Aleu SJ was my rector of the Jesuit community at the time of my leaving the Jesuits after 13 years of association with them.
The appointment of Aggie heralds a new path for the Church in India. However, it highlights the contrasting way different rites in the Indian Church treat former seminarians and nuns. One of the rites, the Syro-Malabar Church, seems to make life difficult for these ‘exes.’
Based originally in the southern state of Kerala, the Oriental Church is now spreading all over the world thanks to migration. Hence the impact of its actions goes beyond its boundaries.
Many in the Church seem to think that punishing those leaving seminaries and convents is to best way to deter the insiders planning to abandon their vocation. Even if they remain disgruntled and dissatisfied, these priests and nuns provide cheap labor for the Church to manage its numerous institutions and farms. Without them, the Church would not be able carry on the same level of activity as it is doing now.
One of my friends, a former priest of Trichur archdiocese, was a lecturer in a college in Vasai, a Mumbai suburb. From Mumbai he had applied for a job in a Christian college in Kerala and got it. Later the management came to know that he was a former priest. They refused him the job.
I could cite many other examples to show how the Church tries to make life miserable for former priests and nuns, especially those in Kerala.
Fortunately the “exes” of Kerala have refused to take it lying down.
They have decided not only protest and but also protect those who leave the orders. An association formed by them, called Kerala Catholic Reform Movement (KCRM), has more than 600 members, all former nuns and priests.
Sr. Anitha, who was allegedly thrown out of a convent, was able to get a severance pay of 1.2 million rupees from her congregation, thanks to KCRM’s intervention.
Common people expect the Church personal to show mercy to those they are dealing.
Sr. Jesme, a former principal of a college and author of a book, Amen, is still bitter that the Church people had spread rumors to tarnish her image after she left the convent. But she is determined to continue her committed life of a nun, outside the convent. She hopes this would set an example for those who want to lead a committed life outside convents.
In a recent program telecast on one of the Kerala TV channels, a number of Church personal were asked about the way they deal with the ‘exes’. They cut a sorry picture. The Syro-Malabar spokesperson was seen pleading with the studio audience not to stamp the Church as an evil institution just from the way it treats the exes. The audience did not seem to agree.
May be the Kerala Church can learn a lesson or two from Aggies’ appointment. Pioneers and path setters as they are, the Jesuits have done a great thing by inviting a former member to manage one of their prestigious institutions in the country. I wish Aggie all success.