MANICKPUR SHINES
- Fr. Joe Pithekar, SJ

The Jesuit community has seen many good and not so good events during these months.

Fr. Pithekar has been away for a while giving retreats at Patna and Gumla. Fr. Philip Carvalho has been in and out of Cardinal Gracias hospital. The prostrate surgery was not very successful. So finally we had to get him admitted at Jesuit Nursing home for a second opinion.  Fr. Philip spent over a month at Vinayalaya. He has already joined the community. He manages to treat himself as advised by the Doctors At Holy Spirit and as directed by Sr. Ancy at Vinayalaya. He looks more cheerful and relaxed.

We brought Fr. Dominic Henriques from Vinayalaya nursing home. He has been there over 4 months. He is with us since 3rd Dec.09. He is trying his best to tell us that he can manage on his own. He manages for a while to walk around with a walker. But gets too exhausted. He needs help to give him a bath and take him around in hiswheel chair. Someone is doing those duties for him. He also needs help tolift him up from his “throne”. He has developed Asthma and needs totake medication regularly.

St. Xavier’s School came into focus when they had a meeting of all Thane ZP Teachers. Over 400 primary teachers were present along with the education officers and Kendra Pramukhs. The Principal, Fr. Saby Correia, had a wonderful opportunity to talk to the teachers. He talked about the role of teachers in the modern world. He exhorted the teachers to create a thirst for education among the students. He asked them to build a healthy self image among them.  They were all taken up the green space around our institutions.

The Annual Parents’ Day was a wonderful opportunity for the staff and the students to create an atmosphere of national integration. We have students of various castes, creeds and also from various languages and economic strata. They organized various national integration programme. 

Our Christmas week was packed with very good cultural programme staged by our parishioners, Rasik Ranjan, and also by other professionals. Unfortunately many of the parishioners could not take advantage of it. The weddings take priority over everything in Vasai. Even the National Catholic Charismatic Convention was partly affected by these events.

This year we were specially honoured  on our parish feast by the presence of Archbishop Felix Machado. Since he came first time after his installation as the Bishop of Vasai we took the occasion to felicitate him. Mrs. Meena Pereira, our D.Ed college Principal, gave an introduction about the Archbishop and Fr. Pithekar welcomed him with a rose flower. In his short reply he praised the Jesuits for their missionary work.