PANJIM: When Pope Francis celebrated the 11th Christmas of his pontificate and presided at a solemn Christmas Eve Mass in St Peter’s Basilica and spoke of the conflict in the Holy Land in his homily, seated on his right was a Goan legal scholar and anthropologist, Deacon Jason Keith Fernandes, from Dona Paula, with roots in Divar.
Goa woke up to this great news on Christmas Day with Deacon Jason’s post on Facebook which was circulated widely by joyous Goans.
The post read “Dixit Dominus Domino meo: Sede a dextris meis” (The Lord said unto my Lord: Sit thou on my right hand). “What an evening it has been, to be given the supreme honour, and privilege, to sit at the right hand of the Pope at the Christmas night mass!”
This was indeed a rare honour given to a Goan Deacon among all prelates and priests who concelebrated the Mass with the Holy Father. One of his main tasks of the day, which he accomplished with reverence, was to receive Infant Jesus from the Pope and place it in the crib at the end of the Mass.
Fernandes, PhD, a Researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), at ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon, who was ordained Deacon (a member of the threefold Christian ministry below the presbyter-priest and Bishop) in Aldona-Goa in February 2023, is spending his final year of priestly formation at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome and the Vatican.
He is “looking forward” to returning to Goa in the middle of 2024. He had a taste of parish life in Aldona in the year 2022-2023, and this whetted his appetite for more.
Speaking to O Heraldo (a paper he has been associated with for over a decade and continues to write his monthly column here), on phone from Rome, followed by an email conversation, Deacon Fernandes said, “When Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão was in Rome in October for the Synod on Synodality, he decided to also formally take possession of his titular church of Santa Maria in Via. As a deacon from the Archdiocese resident in Rome, I was given the opportunity to assist at the Mass with him.”
Deacon Fernandes continued, “At the reception after the Mass, I went up to the Papal MC for the event to thank him for the opportunity and learning - a Papal MC in action is a thing of beauty. The Papal MC then advised me to write to the Office of the Pontifical liturgies for an opportunity to participate in a papal liturgical ceremony.”
But as luck would have it, Fernandes misplaced the email address provided by the Papal MC. Undeterred, Fernandes researched and found another email id and sent his application. That too wasn’t the correct ID, but the office it reached forwarded it onward.
It was while on pilgrimage to see the Holy House of Nazareth in Loreto in the middle of November, that Deacon Jason Fernandes received the all-important email asking if he would be available to participate in the Christmas liturgical celebration with the Holy Father.
“Though I had a planned a trip to Lisbon, I obviously made myself available,” he said, hardly concealing the excitement he felt then.
Then came the all-important lead up to the midnight Mass. Deacon Fernandes was struck by the simplicity and ease of the processes allowing him to prepare without any tension.
He said that there was one practice on December 23 and the final one about 90 minutes before the commencement of the Mass. He also had words of praise for the Papal MCs who were beside them through the service.
“The Pope greeted each one of the servers prior to the Mass, and each of them was presented with a rosary,” informed Deacon Fernandes.
Jason Keith Fernandes had contemplated the priesthood even while a student at the National Law School of India. So, when he graduated in 2000, he went to work with the Jesuit-run institution Taru Mitra in Patna, Bihar. In the course of the year, he realised that he wasn’t called to be a Jesuit, and definitely not in Bihar.
The idea of the priesthood resurfaced once he settled down in a doctoral programme in Lisbon, somewhere around 2010.
By the time the PhD was completed in 2013, he was clear he wanted to serve in Goa, but how exactly was still not clear. A conversation with Archbishop Ferrão convinced him that the diocese would be the right fit.
His father had recently passed away and he realised that his time was limited and he couldn’t keep sitting on the fence! He then took the plunge early 2019, and by October that year he was in the seminary.
Pope Francis laments ‘futile logic of war’
AP, VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis on Sunday lamented that Jesus' message of peace was being drowned out by the “futile logic of war” in the very land where he was born, as the pontiff led the world's Roman Catholics into Christmas.
“Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world,” Francis said. MORE ON PAGE 9 >>