A Man of God whom I will miss forever now
My friend Rev Jose Maliekal SDB [Salesian of Don Bosco] brought me a sad news this morning. Bishop Jerome Dhas Varuvel SDB is no more. Maliekal had informed me a few months back about the bishop emeritus’s deteriorating condition and so the news was no surprise. In a way, it was a consolation because I wouldn’t want him to lie in bed totally incapacitated for too long. Death is a welcome deliverance sometimes. My personal association with Bishop Jerome was confined to just a year, 1978-79. I was a novice then at Mount Don Bosco, the Salesian Novitiate at Kotagiri, near Ooty in Tamil Nadu. Rev Jerome was a young student of priesthood then. His duty was to look after the novices in addition to being their music master, infirmary in-charge, and so on, as part of his religious training. I lost touch with him totally after my novitiate (initiation into religious ascetic life). But when I wrote my memoirs in 2019, I found myself mentioning Rev Jerome. “Brother Jerome was an individ...
