PRIESTLY OBLIGATION TOWARDS HARASSAED MAIDS IN KUWAIT.

“The hand that serves humanity does better service than the tongue that preaches divinity, thus goes the saying”.

The above saying I told Fr. Gabriel Dias the ex Priest of Kuwait Catholic Church when he was posted to Kuwait by his Carmelite Headquarters in Mangalore. Fr. Gabriel was a late vocation Goan priest from Navelim having joined the Seminary after obtaining a degree in Electrical Engineering, then working for a while in Bombay and Goa as an Electrical Engineer. He was a brilliant preacher and orator, Kuwait Church is yet to see another of his type. Though he was playing the role of a Parish Priest yet officially he was not given this post by the ex Bishop Mechallef with the logic that officially appointed Parish Priest may turn into unofficial Hitler and thus destroy the peace in the Church. For this reason Bishop Mechallef did not introduce this post in Kuwait Church under his supervision.

Fr. Gabriel was not a ruffian nor rough nor rude. He was a humble Carmelite and not an arrogant and revengeful Capuchin or Secular. He had decency, civilised family background and disciplined manners to deal with the faithfuls in the Church. He never played dirty tricks and satanic politics with Pastoral Helpers to create disunity in the Church. He never showed jealousy to the laypersons doing excellent job in the Church. Like a “Goonda” he never threatened the faithfuls by using the name of the Police during his preaching knowing very well that such threatening language is below the dignity of the priests and that such terminology disgraces the Christ’s doctrine. He never taxed the pastoral helpers by forcing them to decorate them with expensive dress code as show pieces in the Church.

He never used Church money collected from the poor faithfuls to decorate the Church premises as if it is a dancing hall. He said the House of God should be simple and not luxurious in keeping with the simple living of Christ. He never liked to pinch financially the faithfuls by taxing them for the facilities they were getting free of charge in the Church. He fully understood the financial difficulties of the faithfuls. He said we as priests must imbibe simple living habits in a true Christian spirit when I questioned him why he is not using more luxurious car. For which he replied “my car is only for necessity and not for luxury” and as such I need not change it every now and then at the cost of Church money which contains sweat and blood of poor the faithfuls mainly the domestics. He never created chaos in the Church area among the faithfuls and Pastoral helpers by imitating Saddam Hussein’s tactics.

When I questioned him once why the weekly collections from the Church not disclosed to the faithfuls openly and finally where it goes? Unfortunately he had no answer. According to me Church is not a commercial organisation, the money it generates comes from the faithfuls and as such faithfuls reserve the right to know how much it comes and where it goes. Accountability and transparency should be the principle of the Church finance because some Bishops, Priests and Parish Priests are “Chors”, they use Church money after wine, women and drugs. Today for many Goan priests, priesthood is not a vocation but a mission to live in luxury against the principle of Christianity.

I introduced Fr. Gabriel Dias to our international organisation “Writers Guild” where in his excellent speech he made the gathering comprising all intellectuals including top diplomats from different countries, astonished. He also addressed at Plaza Hotel one of our meetings organised under Goa-Kuwait Solidarity Center whereby even the top locals were surprised to know the calibre of our priest. He was a pride of our community in Kuwait ad not a nuisance. He was a metropolitan and not domestic type of crook, he was meant to be in international arena as he never suffered from inferiority complex. He never used threatening language against anyone by saying “I can send my boys to hit so and so”. He never refused giving good spiritual advice to anyone and never refused any Catholic the privilege of listening Confession saying “I have no time for your Confession”. He never killed the livelihood of any faithful to take his personal revenge. Priesthood was a mission for him and he never took pleasure when faitfuls stopped coming to the Church. He never inducted in the Church as pastoral helpers men with questionable character especially those who treated very badly their fathers in Goa. He did not destroy pastoral helpers and others close to his adversaries. He always acted as a matured priest and not as “Kalcho Porcho Potto”. He never inducted as Pastoral Helper any man by keeping eye on his wife and daughter.

The maid problems when he came to Kuwait around 1995 was at its peak. Many of the maids at that time were from Goa, Mangalore and Bombay. They were either physically or sexually abused by their employers and because of these abuses they escaped from their work places and took shelter in the Safe House provided by Indian Embassy. Though Church every Sunday receive a fat amount of collection from the maids and other domestics yet Church leadership failed to help the suffering maids during their financial crisis thereby forcing many to fall into the hands of human vultures thus losing their Catholic souls to the Lucifer’s kingdom.

I spoke to Fr. Gabriel to do something for this sickness which was afflicted mostly to our Goan maids only. Hence under his leadership we formed an organisation “Konkani Heritage Kuwait” mainly to help repatriation of the Konkani Maids housed at Indian Embassy Safe House, by financing their return air tickets to India. In this manner KHK under the skippership of Fr. Gabriel Dias repatriated many Goan maids safely back to their homes. Otherwise their fate would be very desperate and many of them were subjected to the physical, sexual and torture abuses.

In this forum earlier posting the readers have seen how cruel the Kuwaiti employers can turn. See the way the poor Filippina girl tortured. Like this there are many such cases not surfaced yet and still remained hidden. Some of these cruel Kuwaitis will never change; they are sadistic minded taking pleasure in torturing their domestics. Such cruel acts against poor expatriate maids go against the teachings of the religion they practice. The incident of poor Filippina girl reminds me of the poor young girl Fantine as depicted by Victor Hugo in his epic “Les Miserables” where the poor young girl Fantine was put to miserable treatment by her employer.
I reproduced that write up in this forum to remind once again our Goa females to take note of such atrocities, tomorrow they may be also be the victims of such torturing. I hope our Church leaders and social workers will enlighten our maids coming to Kuwait on this topic.

A. Veronica Fernandes,
Kuwait.