(ZENIT News / Rome, 05.13.2024).- On May 12, Deacon Santosh Kumar will be ordained a priest in India. He will serve some of the most remote communities of the country and of civilization: the Andaman Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean.
In the archipelago, for example, there is the island of North Sentinel where there is a tribe of hunter-gatherers who arrived some 60,000 years ago, but without any contact with civilization. Some missionaries like Jhon Chau have been killed by that tribe.
The future Father Kumar has been evangelizing in the parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. To get there, the faithful are used to walking miles on foot through forests full of snakes and other wildlife just to get to Sunday Mass. Kumar and the current parish priest also have to cross these terrains to get to the parish.
Kumar accepts that it is difficult to get to the parish and that it involves considerable effort but he is encouraged by the fact that people also attend and that the church is always full. He says that “the faithful are thirsty for the Eucharist and prayer”.
The deacon travels through villages that are 20 to 30 km apart, so he rides a motorcycle provided by Aid to the Church in Need. In these communities “there is no electricity or internet, there is a shortage of water, but we manage to get by,” he says.
Kumar, on the eve of his ordination, says he began to consider his vocation when his father got cancer and he prayed to God, “and that began to change my life,” he says. His father recovered and he felt more and more attracted to be a missionary.
“In my diocese priests are few, but seeing the priest working for the people, I saw their (people’s) thirst for Christ and their need for the Mass and other sacraments. Thanks to Aid to the Church in Need and all its benefactors for the support they have given me on my path to the priesthood,” he concluded.
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