By the dawn of the 20th century, the Goan of the deep village especially in the Salcete region was thoroughly Christianized. He was a strange and dichotomous mix of isolation in part and connection with a Western world, of superstition and polytheism melded with the Judaic notions of monotheism. He had somehow managed to syncretise the traditions of an agrarian community which paid deference to the grace of nature and a more personal European God, who promised miracles dependent on good works alone. He had retained the ugly scar of casteism and yet come to believe in the virtues of equality in the eyes of an egalitarian God. He must have been a curious creature in the Indian subcontinent, to believe so vehemently in the efficacy and potency of White Caucasian Gods and Saints, who looked down on him from the impressive, gilt-edged portraits which hung on the walls of Churches bathed in Baroque elegance.

But there he was a thorough Christian; a changed man, for Christianity did not just bring superficial changes in our dress, speech and eating habits. It brought us more fundamental and profound changes in our mindset. It brought to the fore the concept of Free Will, which was so close to the hearts of those Jesuits who roamed the hilly plains of Goa in search of pagan souls to save; that destiny could be carved from resourcefulness and cunning, that aspirations could be given wings and let fly, that dreams could be culled from the morass, despair and the insularity of the Goan village. From those solitary roads of the Goan villages paved with whitewashed wayside crosses and express chapels, he set forth to the continent of Africa and the Gulf. Just as the Portuguese had arrived on the Konkan coast with a cross in one hand and a sword in the other, he arrived in these continents with his calloused hands to toil away in sweat for most of the day and fold in prayer during the night.

The Goan's need for spiritual nourishment was as strong as his need to sustain himself. When my parents arrived in Dubai in the sixties, it was but an arid stretch of land with nothing more than a few palm-frond huts and one-storied buildings to attest to the presence of humans on its sea coast, bordering an expanse of the desert the Arabs themselves called the Rub al'khali, meaning the Empty Quarter. Within a few years, an Italian priest assigned to the region, Father Eusebius Daveri built the St. Mary's Church. Father Eusebius' staff was made up entirely of Goans and Mangaloreans from his sacristan who also doubled up as his cook, to the choir master and his personal secretary. Early Goans in the Gulf were dynamic parishioners. They organized choirs, the mid-night mass, Good Friday vigils and celebrations of feast days. When it came time to rebuild the Church because it had outgrown the parish, the project was in part headed by a young Goan priest, Father Cardoz from the village of Morjim, better known for its Ridley turtles.

In the seventies, quite a few Goan priests made their way to the parishes of America. Within a few years of colonizing Goa, the Portuguese had decided that it was in their best interests to prepare a native clergy to help with the spread of Christianity in the region. This experiment with training native Goans to become priests proved to be astonishingly successful for when the Polish Apostolic delegate, Wladyslaw Michal Zaleski Boniface, visited Goa in 1887, he wrote: "Dans le Inde Portugaises, tout le clergé est indigène, et il n'est pas inférieur a celui de beaucoup de diocèse de l"Europe," meaning in Portuguese India all the clergy is native and in no way inferior to most of the diocese of Europe.

Today one of Goa's most effective exports is its priests. Monsignor Nicholas Soares became the first Indian priest to be incardinated by the Arch Dioceses of New York, at a time when only European priests were considered suitable. When I spoke to the Monsignor, he assured me that today the Western world would not be able to run their Churches without the assistance of Asian priests. Pastoral care in a country known more for its embrace of the material rather than the spiritual may have its challenges but Monsignor Soares reflects: "No matter the technological advances, no matter the wealth, no matter how much we may give God the absent treatment, life and death invariably takes its toll on everybody and draw us closer to God."

When the European missionaries first crossed into the warmer waters of the Indian ocean, their early converts were called "rice-Christians", a sneering term meaning poor Asians who converted for a bowl of rice. The descendants of these same "rice-Christians" have now become the backbone of the Catholic Church, exemplary missionaries, spreading the faith and growing Churches wherever they go.

Seasons Greetings to you!