Prof Courtenay Bartholomew

In 1530, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego in Guadalupe , Mexico on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which, as you will see later, is very pertinent to this article.

Over a hundred years later, in the year 1646, King Dom Joao III of the Royal House of Braganza in Portugal and the entire nation swore fidelity to Mary under the title “The Immaculate Conception”. She was then proclaimed “Queen and Patroness of Portugal”. For that reason, Portugal 's monarchs never wear a crown.

It has been reserved for “The Immaculate Conception”. This was long before the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854. It is therefore perhaps significant, for example, that Portugal escaped the ravages of both world wars.

It was not until 1858 that she chose a little backward village called Lourdes in France to appear to a simple uneducated peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous and said to her in early March of that year: “I wish a chapel to be built here.”

She later added: “Let processions come forth.” Then on March 25, 1858 , also significantly on the feast of the Annunciation, she revealed to Bernadette: “ I am the Immaculate Conception. ” It was 200 years after Portugal first officially recognised her under that title.

Now, following my visit to Portugal recently, I was in search of a book which was written by Jo-Anne Ferreira, entitled The Portuguese of Trinidad And Tobago : A Portrait of an Ethnic Minority.

It is out of print now but Ignatius Ferreira, the Honourary Counsel of Portugal , gave me as a gift a copy of that book. It tells a most interesting history of the people of Portuguese descent in Trinidad and Tobago .

The first group of legal Portuguese immigrants arrived in Trinidad from Portuguese Madeira as contract labourers in 1846. At that time many of the people in Madeira had been experiencing severe economic and social turmoil as a result of several factors, including an economy weakened since the early eighteenth century.

Moreover, the production of Madeira wine suffered from the destruction of the vines by a blight and could not compete with French wines. There was widespread unemployment.

Because of ongoing economic problems in Madeira , many Portuguese continued to migrate voluntarily to Portuguese Brazil, Trinidad and Guyana well into the twentieth century to join relatives. For these reasons, Portugal has been compared to Ireland , which, because of the potato blight, caused the Irish to emigrate to other lands.

Indeed, the Portuguese followed the first Indians and preceded the first Chinese indentured labourers in Trinidad . Writing of the first Portuguese indentured labourers, Charles Day noted that “it appears that as soon as they fulfilled their engagements and saved a little money, they forsook field labour” in favour of small retail groceries and rum-shops.

The very community-oriented Catholic Portuguese brought with them their deep love of festas (feast days) and the religious life of the early immigrants revolved around the annual celebration of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Nossa Senhora do Monte (Our Lady of the Mount), which was celebrated each year on a hill in Madeira.

Indeed, in Trinidad the desire to perpetuate and recapture this feast and its traditional procession in almost every detail was very strong and was a rallying occasion for the community.

From about 1875 to 1879, a little chapel on a hill in East Dry River was used for the celebration of the feast, but it was found to be too small for the growing number of faithful followers.

St Patrick's Church in Newtown was then chosen as the new site for the Mass and procession, however, as it was not situated on a hill, it was not considered to be the most ideal setting.

After four or five years, the timber church of Our Lady of Laventille was chosen as the new location since it had the added advantage of being on a hill. And so, in 1885, the feast of Nossa Senhora do Monte was celebrated in Laventille for the first time.

Over 2,500 people (Portuguese, other Catholics and interested onlookers) were present for the fireworks at the church grounds on the eve of the feast day and on the day itself, 2,000 came to celebrate the Mass and to witness the procession.

Although the church itself could only accommodate 600 people, those who could not enter it remained standing outside. A little statue of the Madonna and Child (like that in Madeira ), borne on an elaborate litter by four laymen, brought up the rear of the procession.

The processions continued for some time, at least up to the early nineteenth century, and later they began from the Cathedral up to Laventille.

In 1886, the laying of the cornerstone of the permanent concrete church building was an occasion of great significance for the Catholic Portuguese community and the mortar which held the cornerstone was laid by a Portuguese princess, Princess Aldegonda of the Royal House of Braganza and her French husband, Henri de Bourbon, the Count de Bardi.

This royal couple became patrons and benefactors of the Laventille church and their presence at the event served to reunite the Portuguese Catholics around the country. In fact, over ten years ago, Ignatius Ferreira also donated an organ for the church of Laventille .

The feast of Nossa Senhora do Monte has long ceased to be the religious rallying point for Trinidadian Portuguese Catholics as Portuguese Catholics are now no longer distinct as a community within the Catholic population.

The community, however, has given several nuns and priests, including the late Bishop John Mendes, Msgr Christian Perreira and Sr Paul D'Ornellas to the national Roman Catholic community.

Other well-known early Portuguese Trinidadians included Joseph B Fernandez, Albert Gomes, Sir Errol dos Santos, George Cabral, George De Nobriga and many others too numerous to mention.

Now, in 1878, the Laventille church had received a thirty foot statue of Our Lady from France. Significantly, however, it was not a statue of Our Lady of Fatima since the Fatima apparitions did not take place until 1917.

It was not until 1943 that the Irish Archbishop Count Finbar Ryan who, incidentally, wrote the first book in English on “Our Lady of Fatima,” consecrated the Archdiocese of Port of Spain to the “Immaculate Heart of Mary” and it was he who inaugurated the celebrated Fatima devotions in Laventille from May until October each year.

In those days the devotions were held on the thirteenth of the month irrespective of the day of the week. There were thousands of Catholic Trinidadians who processed up the hill of Laventille to the shrine in concert with the devotions, which take place in Fatima where the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima, carved in 1918 by the famous Portuguese sculptor José Thedim, is processed at the rear of the procession with a huge congregation of devotees (at times as many as 700,000), all waving white handkerchiefs at “the image of our Queen” as she appeared to the visionaries in Fatima.

In Trinidad it was a procession and a congregation of all ages and all levels of society, the young and the old, the well-to-do and the poor. It was the Laventille of the 1940s and 50s. It was the Laventille that was poor but respectful, poor but peaceful, poor but polite.

It did not have the reputation of the Laventille of today (may I hasten to add that I do believe that the majority of today's “Laventilleans” are law abiding people) but I know thousands of Catholics who would not choose to attend the devotions there today—and for understandable reasons.

Indeed, for many years now, the congregation that gathers on that hill for the Fatima devotions is much smaller than days of yore, and is generally speaking of the faithful older age group, almost the same people every month.

This leads to the ultimate reason for writing this article, namely, to express my firm and unshakeable opinion, in concert with many others, that the time has long come to move the site of the Fatima devotions once more—this time from Laventille (which deprives the vast majority of the Catholic community from participating in this devotion).

“Catholic” means universal and the devotions to Our Lady should not be restricted to a certain few, who feel comfortable in Laventille. Moreover, in recent times when I used to attend those devotions there were frequent loud musical interruptions from houses or clubs nearby, which inappropriately interrupted the piety of the occasion.

It is clearly obvious that the Laventille shrine with its large statue of Our Lady overlooking (as it were, protecting) the city and the land, like the Corcavoda mountain in Rio de Janeiro with the huge statue of Christ, will always be a significant and important religious landmark in this country.

However, as I said before, it is pertinent to appreciate that the Laventille statue given to us by the French is not a statue of Our Lady of Fatima. In addition, Our Lady never appeared on Laventille hill as she did in Mexico , Lourdes and Fatima.

Had she done so, I would have insisted that Laventille was “holy ground” and irrespective of today's' violence and indiscipline there, the devotions would have to stay there.

It is my personal opinion therefore that the new site for the Fatima devotions should be in the grounds of the College of “The Immaculate Conception” (CIC) in Serpentine Road where there is privacy, a quiet atmosphere and parking facilities, particularly on Sundays. “Let processions then come forth.”

The alternative is the playing field ground of Fatima College, but this is a poor second choice. Moreover, there should be an appropriate and large statue (which can be purchased from Fatima) of Our Lady of Fatima processed to the altar where the Mass will be celebrated as is still done in Fatima today.

However (and this is important), the devotions should still be under the aegis of the Laventille parish priest and committee but it should be more “catholic” in concept and one or two other well-organised Catholic communities should be “secondary” collaborators because it will call for great organisational ability to accommodate the thousands of devotees which I expect. Moreover, as a matter of protocol, the committee should include a chosen member of the Portuguese community.

Finally, just as in the early history of the devotions of Nossa Sehora do Monte in Trinidad, Portugal's Princess Aldegona of the House of Braganza visited Trinidad to lay the cornerstone of the Laventille church, it is not at all unlikely that one day His Royal Highness, Dom Duarte III Pio, present Head of the Royal House of Braganza, as a tribute to the history of the Portuguese devotion, would accept an invitation to come to Trinidad, among other things, to be present at one of the “Fatima” ceremonies. After all, the Fatima devotion is still a Portuguese event.

I rest my case with this appeal to the hierarchy of the Church and the lay Catholic community of Trinidad and Tobago. Of course, this is not necessarily the opinion of the Catholic News but let the debate begin.