Goemkarponn desk
CANACONA: The annual feast of St. Francis Xavier is celebrated with great pomp and gaiety at Bhatpal Church in Canacona on Monday.
Diocessan Biblical Centre, Old Goa Director Fr. Marian Costa was the main celebrant of the Feast Mass while Bhatpal Church Parish Priest Fr. Freddy Lobo, Asstt Parish Priest and Administrator (Chiplem) Joseph Correia alongwith a few other local priests of Canacona deanery were the co-celebrants.
In his homily, Fr. Costa called on the faithful to understand and live the missionary life and lived by the great saint, who inspite of various restrictions preached the word of God and spread the message of Christianity. St. Francis Xavier though born in a rich and influential family left the worldly riches and became a priest to save his own and other’s ‘Souls’ on the mere words which St. Ignatius Loyola rescinded to him from the Bible, ‘What profits a Man, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?
Interestingly, while Saint Francis Xavier’s body rests in a crystal urn at the Basilica at Old Goa, a piece of Saint’s bone is preserved in a small glass casked at St. Francis Xavier Church, Bhatpal in Canacona. Bhatpal which had a chapel till 1968, is upgraded to a church dedicated to St. Francis Xavier and though consists of limited number of parishioners, hosts devotees from all over the taluka and even beyond the borders with Karnataka, attending daily novenas (which began from 25th November) with morning and evening masses and Salve, celebrated three masses on feast day (6.30 am, 8 am and feast mass at 10 am) followed by processssion and kissing of the relic.
While the relic was kept for veneration during the novena days, it was kept for public veneration till 7 pm on feast day, where also people from different faiths came with candles and flowers, as also devotees offered body parts (made out of combustible material) and dedicated the same at the feets of the saint praying for Health and Prosperity.
Later on the feast night, Konkani drama “Ho Koslo Inam by Director Ulhas Tari was staged while King of Centuries Roseferns’‘Dev Tumkam Bhogsum’ will be staged on Tuesday late evening in aid of St. Francis Xavier Church, Bhatpal.-
