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June 20, 2019By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free PressHe’s expecting to be the 37th priest from his village – and the first Indian ordained for the Diocese of Worcester. The fact that he’s here has something to do with the first priest and the “untouchables” in his village, the Assumptionists in Worcester and Tibetan refugees in France.
This is the story told by Deacon Vijaya Sagar Gundiga, who is to be ordained a priest for the Worcester diocese tomorrow. The ordination can be watched live or later on the diocesan website, worcesterdiocese.org.He was born and brought up in southern India, in a village of 120 Catholic families and 30 low caste Hindu families considered “untouchables.” Of the Catholics, 36 became priests, 25 nuns.
Every morning the children attended Mass, and every evening they prayed the rosary. And they went to school. Or were supposed to.
“I did not like to study,” Deacon Gundiga said. “I used to go hide somewhere and play. I used to fail at least half of the courses. I wanted to be like one of those 36 priests and 25 nuns, because they were very much respected,” teaching the children as they did.
But, he thought, “I can’t … because I don’t study.”
The first of those priests played with the Hindu children and helped them reject the idea that they couldn’t go to school because they were untouchables. He taught them catechism, got them scholarships and converted all of them.
This made the young Gundiga boy want to be a priest even more; he figured only priests could change people like that. He worked hard to pass his courses and attended summer discernment camps.
He wanted to be a diocesan priest, doing pastoral work like the priest who reached out to the untouchables. But their diocese could take only five to 10 of the best candidates out of the 100 to 150 interested boys.
“I tried for three dioceses,” Deacon Gundiga said. “I was not accepted.” So he went to join a religious congregation, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales. He didn’t like it, though he didn’t know why, so he left.
He studied journalism and psychology on the undergraduate level and asked himself, “What next?” With the idea of priesthood ringing in his mind, he searched again, unsuccessfully, for a diocese that would accept him.
A friend of his brother’s suggested he apply for the Augustinians of the Assumption in Worcester, with whom that friend had briefly discerned a vocation.
Deacon Gundiga responded that he was a poor student and didn’t know English well; he’d done many of his studies in his mother tongue, Telugu.
“But he pushed me by giving me the email address of Father John Franck,” one of the Assumptionists, Deacon Gundiga said. He contacted Father Franck and was invited to discern a vocation with the Assumptionists in the Philippines. He said he stayed there two-and-a-half years, studying philosophy, receiving formation and working in soup kitchens and with children, youth, “drunken fathers” and widowed mothers.
“In 2013 they asked me to come to the United States of America for my novitiate,” Deacon Gundiga said. “At the end of the novitiate I got interested in pastoral ministry again.”
He said he asked his superiors to send him to Kenya for more pastoral experience, but they sent him to study theology at St. John Seminary in Brighton. There, with men preparing to be diocesan priests, “my desire grew even stronger for the pastoral ministry and diocesan life.”
Deacon Gundiga said he asked to work with the Assumptionists in Paris, where he lived on boats and sometimes slept in the streets with Tibetan refugees.
“I was able to listen to their stories, eat with them, pray with them,” he said.
They were supposed to live on the boats on the Seine, but those who didn’t have a space slept along the streets. Then police sometimes arrested and investigated them. But if he stayed with them, he could tell the police, “They are good people,” and the police left them alone.
“After seeing that, my desire grew even stronger to become a diocesan priest, because that is the pastoral ministry I am looking for, staying close to the people, fathering the people,” Deacon Gundiga said.
He could do those things as an Assumptionist too, but they are not the priority in the religious congregation that they are for diocesan priests, he said. So he asked his superiors about transferring from the Assumptionists to diocesan life.
“It was very difficult – heart-breaking … leaving them,” he said. “Seven years we were … together. I loved my superiors. … They taught me, formed me. I felt like it was my home. It was like leaving my own house.
“One of my superiors supported me a lot to send me to the diocese. He understood my emotions” and desire for pastoral ministry “and he helped me to get into the Diocese of Worcester.”
That superior, Assumptionist Father Richard Lamoureux asked him what diocese he wanted to apply for and he said his first choice was Worcester. The priests and people he knew in the United States, including the Assumptionists and their sister congregation the Religious of the Assumption, are here.
“And here I am,” Deacon Gundiga said. “Bishop McManus generously accepted me.”
He studied for two-and-one-half years for the Worcester Diocese and served summer assignments at St. George in Worcester and St. Gabriel, the Archangel Parish in Upton, where he is to become associate pastor Aug. 1.
“The people of Upton really took care of me,” Deacon Gundiga said. “They taught me. They accepted me. And Father Larry (Brault, the pastor,) has been” a great help.
“I feel like I’m at home,” Deacon Gundiga said. “I feel like Worcester is my home.”
“The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few,” he said.
After many years and going around the world, he’s accepted joyfully the call that God has given him.
