By Lissy Maruthanakuzhy

Panaji: A woman in critical condition was admitted at the Goa archdiocese’s Covid Care Centre. The next day, she was on her feet, after some medical care.

A doctor, who treated her, remarked, “If this is not a miracle what is!”

Father Joephil Dominic Dias, the center’s director, says he has witnessed such “miracles” during the 40 days he spent there as one of its directors.

The center is attached to Old Goa’s Joseph Vaz Renewal Centre and Father Dias came there April 30, just two days after his ordination.

Father Dias says his days at the Covid Care Centre “were the most enriching” in his life.”

He was with his family when he received information about the archdiocese’s plan to set up the Covid-care center.

“My parents were sacred when I told them of my plan to join the team. But they did not object,” said Father Dias, who is now the assistant parish priest at St Michael’s Church at Talegao, Goa.

“It was an inner urge to join the team when I received the message. I wanted to be of help to the people who were suffering from the pandemic,” said the 31-year old priest, who was made one of the administrators of the center.

He said he volunteered for the service soon after his ordination and the days at the center “helped me to re-focus and re-orient myself as a ministerial priest of the Catholic Church.”

The ordination had taken place in the backdrop of raging coronavirus pandemic that until then had claimed two bishops and several priests in India. The Church in India lost more than 60 priests in April alone.

Father Dias and other new priests of Goa archdiocese could not offer thanksgiving Mass in their parishes as they were all closed because of the pandemic.

“We accept the situation as God’s plan. We experience the internal joy of our ordination. We are very happy that we are ordained,” said Father Dias hailing from Chandor parish. A post graduate in microbiology, Father Dias has a younger sister.

The work at the Joseph Vaz Renewal Centre, Old Goa, involved setting up of rooms and wards, making protocols, having sufficient medicines, arranging catering, housekeeping and waste management services, arranging for test centers.

The center was opened on May 10 at the peak of the pandemic when there were no rooms in hospitals and health centers, and religious retreat houses began to offer their space.

With only the first dose of vaccine taken two days before the center opened, the chances of contracting virus were high for him. He could not wear PPT kit since he had to reach out to various needs at the center, at the same time meet the people coming in.

“Somehow I believed that God would protect me. And each day during the Eucharistic celebration I asked the Lord to protect all of us, and he did,” Fr Dias explained.

At the center, Fr Dias dealt directly with patients struggling for breath; faced their experience of anxiety and fear, and the loneliness they felt at the realization none of their dear ones were around. Some of them cried out when they were admitted at the center.

Looking back to the uncertain moments Father Dias says, “I accepted the responsibility trusting in the Lord. I thought, if doctors, nurses and frontline workers can work for Covid-19 patients without bothering about themselves and their families, then why shouldn’t I?”

“If not for God’s providence and assistance, the whole situation would have been futile,” Father Dias recalled.

“Although all hospitals around us were houseful whenever we required to admit a patient from our center, we found a place. God’s help was delayed but never denied,” the young priest said with joy.

The patients admitted were from various faiths. According to the priest, they all experienced a spiritual force helping them to fight illness.

Joseph Vaz Renewal Center is situated at the site of Cruz dos Milagres located at Monte de Boa Vista, which is associated with the apparition of the Lord Jesus in 1619.

This site is dear to Goans as it is closely connected with Saint Joseph Vaz, a Goan missionary who worked in Sri Lanka in the seventeenth century.

Father Dias claimed several miraculous healings at the center.

The doctor, who saw the miracle in woman’s healing, often remarked that the place was special as nobody who served there was infected. “According to him, the recovery rate of the patients was high compared to the hospital where he worked” Father Dias said.

An unnamed priest, who came to the center for post-Covid rehabilitation, told Father Dias that he was convinced he would get well if he came there.

“The success of the Covid Care Centre was precisely because of the mixing of God and human persons. God used all of us as instruments of his love, mercy and healing. The center was an outcome of the collaborative hands wanting to help humanity in need. Working together among us we built up a close knit family,” Father Dias added.