Filomena Saraswati Giese –
India is a great civilization and the country that has just reached the southern part of the moon, a feat no other nation has accomplished. But it has also been a country that has Ashoka’s great experiment in trying to make a unified multi-religious State. And of having past rulers and a modern State that has taken in refugees of religious persecution. Most famously, India gave refuge to the Zoroastrian refugees fleeing religious persecution from Islamic invaders in the seventh century from Iran. These are the amazing Parsis of India. India took in the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhist refugees escaping from Chinese Communist forces in the early fifties.
It seems that our original homeland is again fractured by inter-religious violence. Those of us like our California-based Joseph (Naik) Vaz Institute who have been working on making a native Indian-Sri Lanka Saint who worked without colonial arms in Sri Lanka like Saint Joseph (Naik) Vaz feel he has a role in helping to bridge religious differences and solve the pain and suffering of religious violence.
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An Updated Petition to H.H. Pope Francis
We just updated our petition to H.H. Pope Francis of 2021 from asking him to be made Patron Saint of First Responders to Patron Saint of his major apostolates The updated petition is on the Change.org link.
St. Joseph (Naik) Vaz was canonized in 2015 by H.H. Pope Francis. In 2021, we petitioned His Holiness Pope Francis to make him Patron Saint of First Responders for washing the sores and nursing the abandoned victims of a smallpox epidemic in the Buddhist Kingdom of Kandy at the risk of getting infected himself. This resonated with our humanitarian needs during the Covid crisis. In this way, we got involved in an age-old tradition of the Church to make a Saint a Patron Saint of his major apostolates.
As St. Kuriakose Elias Chavera from the Syro-Malabar Rite of the Church in the Indian State of Kerala was made Patron Saint of four of his apostolates on the day of his Canonization in 2014., we decided to update that Petition to ask that St. Joseph (Naik) Vaz also be made a Patron Saint of his major apostolates.
Why St. Joseph Vaz For Patron Saint of Inter-Religious Relations and Peace
Most importantly, we’re asking that he be made Patron Saint of Inter-religious Relations. In our recently update Petition to the Pope. And here’s why:
- He was a Saint born in India and his family in Goa was descended from the Hindu family of “Naik”. But his family had their ancestral name removed by the European missionaries.
- When he made converts in Sri Lanka, he never gave them Western names or forced Western cultures on them. Instead, he allowed them to keep their original Indian and Sri Lankan names and ancestral cultures.
- *While working under persecution in Kanara in south India to rebuild the missions and churches destroyed by the Dutch and their native allies, he used our Indian cultures and languages in his apostolic missionary work. He did the same in Sri Lanka later.
- Joseph (Naik) Vaz was recognized as a “Sannyasi” which is a renunciate practising the foundation of Indian Vedantic spirituality. He started walking barefoot on his missionary journeys from the day of his Ordination to the priesthood in 1676 for the twenty-three years of his missionary life in Sri Lanka. He never touched money or asked for payment for his spiritual or other services to those he ministered which is another mark of Sannyasa.
- The Buddhist kings of Kandy and other non-Christians admired him as the Compassionate Boddhisattva for his compassionate care of the abandoned victims of smallpox in Kandy and throughout the Sri Lankan towns and countryside.
- In a plot to have him banished from the protection of the Buddhist King of Kandy from Dutch persecution and pursuit, the Muslim physician of the King, named Gopala Mudaliyar intervened with the King for mercy and saved him. He was much admired by the many Muslim victims of smallpox that St. Joseph Vaz nursed back to health. He is a worthy inspiration and Patron of Christian-Muslim Relations. “
- He studied with the Buddhist monks in Kandy.
- He practiced meditation and led public meditation in the churches for his Catholic flock.
- He taught meditation to children
- He used inter-religious ideas in his missionary life..
- He wrote prayers and hymns in the local Tamil and Sinhala languages that the people could understand and use.
- He founded a native para-liturgy and Catholic literature in Tamil and Sinhala, the two major languages of the people of Sri Lanka.
New Initiatives for Inter-Religious Understanding in the Modern Church
In 1986, we had the Inter-Religious Initiative of Pope St. John Paul II to invite inter-religious representatives to pray together at the Coliseum to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto.
In October 2021, H.H Pope Francis, at the initiative of the Sant’Egidio Community, brought together representatives of many religions to pray together at the Coliseum to celebrate the 35th anniversary of that inter-religious meeting by Pope St. John Paul II.
There has been an increase in inter-religious meetings and gatherings in India and elsewhere as the realization increases that this dialogue is of great importance. We ourselves have sought to highlight aspects of ethnic identity and inclusiveness in religious matters through participation with Inter-religious representatives here in California since 1978.
In 1995 we had the participation of Hindu and Buddhist monks at the Mass for his Beatification in 1995 at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. And we had multi-faith speakers and performers of sacred music at the Mass to celebrate his Canonization in 2015 at Oakland’s Cathedral of Christ the Light.
An Appeal for your Signature and Support for an India-Sri Lankan “Patron Saint of Inter-religious Relations”
We have had our share of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian religious intolerance and violence in India. But we’ve also had our Greats of Religious Tolerance, Compassion and Peace such as the Buddha, Ashoka, Ramakrishna, and Gandhi., and Indian and Sri Lankan State leaders like Sri Lankan Buddhist King Vimaladharma Surya II of Kandy who gave protection to religious refugees. St. Joseph (Naik) Vaz is a symbol of inter-religious tolerance and acceptance of other people’s beliefs who lived the inter-religious experience.
We hope that readers who support inter-religious collaboration as a way of achieving Multi-religious Peace will sign our updated Petition to make St. Joseph (Naik) Vaz a Patron Saint of Inter-religious Relations and his other major apostolates on Change.org.
Filomena Saraswati Giese is the Founder-President of the Joseph Naik Vaz Institute, Berkeley, California, US.