Shillong: A Salesian priest, who was known as a healer, exorcist, missioner, author, and political and social thinker of northeastern India, died May 28 morning. He was 95.
Father Sylvanus Sngi Lyngdoh, who preached tribal religions as the dawn and Christianity as the day, fell ill toward April end and was admitted to Nazareth Hospital Shillong, capital of Meghalaya state. He never recovered.
The requiem Mass is scheduled on May 30 at Shillong’s Cathedral of Mary Help of Christians followed by funeral at 1:30 pm.
Fr Sngi, as he was popularly called, had taught scripture at Sacred Heart Theological College, Shillong, for 45 years.
Salesian Provincial of Shillong Fr George Maliekal called Fr. Sngi “our honor and glory and a great source of inspiration for all.”
Fr V.M. Thomas, his counterpart in neighboring Guwahati province and national president of the Conference of religious India, said, “The Church and the Salesian congregation in India, especially in northeastern region, are admirers and beneficiaries of Fr. Sngi, a legend.”
Fr Francis Fernandes, his former student and colleague at Sacred Heart College Shillong and currently Controller of Examinations at Assam Don Bosco University, said Fr. Sngi was a “outstanding teacher, writer and evangelizer.”
He said the elderly priest’s “extraordinary range of intellectual, scholarly, missionary, pastoral, social, literary and healing activities” spanned over several decades.
Based at the Salesian theologate, Fr Sngi dedicated decades to teaching, writing, preaching and healing scores of ailing people who came to him from far flung villages.
He was a popular editor of the Khasi weekly “Ka Sur Shipara” for nearly two decades from 1976.
By his 90th birthday in 2011 Fr. Sngi had published 30 books, several of them running into a thousand pages.
On that occasion, he said he was praying for another 15 years to fulfill his mission of writing an 80-volume commentary of the Bible in Khasi, a prominent tribal language of Meghalaya. He had begun the work 20 years earlier.
The Khasi priest, dressed in cassock and wore traditional tribal turban and shawl, began his day at 3 am and spent hours at his computer until he went to bed at 9 pm.
In 2005, the then Salesian Rector Major Pascual V. Chavez hailed Fr Sngi’s extraordinary intellectual talents, tenacity for work and passion for the missions. “He was not only a scholar and a professor, but also a pastor and shepherd, a Salesian who was able to harmonize scientific competence and proclamation of the Word,” he added.
The same year, Fr Manlio Sodi, former Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Salesian Pontifical University, on behalf of the Salesian chief conferred an honorary doctorate on Fr Sngi, recognizing his biblical, literary, socio-cultural and religious contribution.
Fr Sngi was born on January 3, 1921 as the eldest of 15 children in a Khasi family at Nongbah Thaiang, a remote village in the Ri Bhoi district of Meghalaya. He was baptized at the age of nine by now Servant of God Fr. Constantine Vendrame, known as the Apostle of the Khasis.
Fr. Sngi joined the Salesian Congregation in 1948 and graduated from Calcutta University with honors and a first class first in Latin, he pursued his theological and biblical studies in Italy, Israel and Greece. Besides obtaining a Masters’ degree in theology, and an M.Phil in Sacred Scripture, he mastered Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and several other languages.
He was ordained by Salesian Bishop Michele Alberto Arduino of Shiuchow, China, in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turing in 1958.
Fr. Sngi has taught Sacred Scripture in various theological institutes in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Meghalaya.
He authored more than 40 books and among his outstanding literary contributions are his Khasi-Hebrew, Khasi- Greek, and Khasi- Aramaic dictionaries.
He co-translated and edited along with late Fr. Henry Fantin, the Khasi Catholic Bible, a landmark literary volume in the Khasi language.
Fr. Sngi often said he drew inspiration as child from earlier missionaries who worked in northeastern India.
Primrose Gathphoh, a Protestant scholar, had convinced him of the need to make available the living pages of the Holy Bible in simple, popular, idiomatic and dignified language of the people.
“I realized that our Khasi people would not easily and quickly reach the total fulfillment of their religious aspirations without the Bible in their own idiomatic language. So, I started working immediately, seriously and scientifically to realize their dream and mine,” Fr Sngi had said.
Fr. Sngi also toured extensively the Khasi and Jaintia Hills to proclaim the Gospel and teach the inexorable link between Christianity and the traditional Khasi religion.
Fr Sngi, whose first name means sun in Khasi, often said Christians among his tribal people believe that Jesus Christ came to “perfect” their traditional religion. He said often used the Khasi worldview and concepts in explaining Christianity to tribal people.
Late Salesian Father Sebastian Karotemprel, one of his colleagues, had described Fr. Sngi as a “human machine, driving it with an extraordinary physical, mental and psychological stamina as few others have done.”
Fr Sngi celebrated golden jubilee of his priestly ordination at his home parish Mawbri-Iapngar in 2008.