By Irudhaya Jothi
New Delhi, Jan 27, 2022: Jesuit Father Lucas Rayappan, an educationist in Gujarat, died January 27 in Ahmedabad, the western Indian state’s commercial capital.
A message from the Gujarat Jesuit province headquarters says the priest died at 3:55 pm at Shalby Hospital in Ahmedabad. He was 59.
While the official message does not indicate the cause of the death, Father Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit social activist based in Ahmedabad, told Matters India that Father Rayappan died of Covid-19.
Father Prakash also said Father Rayappan was suffering from cough for some days and was admitted in the hospital.
He was buried January 27 in the Catholic cemetery in Ahmedabad, Father Prakash said.
Father Rayappan is the second Jesuit to die in the third wave of Covid-19 in India.
On January 26, Father Jeyaseelan Thomas Barnabas, a canonist and member of the Madurai, province died while he was taken to a hospital in the Dindigul town of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He was 69.
Father Rayappan was manager of St Xavier’s School Loyola Hall in Ahmedabad at the time of his death.
He was born on February 3, 1962, in Sindalchery, a village in Tamil Nadu’s Theni district. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1982 and took his first vows two years later at Premal Jyoti, the Jesuit novitiate in Ahmedabad.
He studied philosophy at Chennai’s Satya Nilayam (house of truth) and theology at Premal Jyoti, Ahmedabad. He was ordained a priest on December 28, 1995 at Patlad in Gujarat’s Anand district.
He started his priestly minister as the assistant parish priest of St. Joseph’s Vadodara. He then taught at St. Joseph’s School Vadodara. He was appointed principal of St. Xavier’s School, Kalol in 1999.
He had also served as the principal of Navjyot School, Subir (2002-2003), Deevalaya School, Fulwadi(2003-2008), St. Joseph’s School Vadodara (2008-2015), and Rosary School, Vadodara (2015- 2020).