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 individual whom I adored in those days,” I wrote. “He was our music master who taught us new hymns and songs. He was also in charge of the infirmary. Never in my life have I found a man more unassuming and caring than Brother Jerome… I loved him like I had never loved anyone. No one had ever made me feel so loved.”

Brother Jerome became Father Jerome and then Bishop Jerome. He was the first bishop of the Kuzhithurai diocese in Tamil Nadu which was established in 2014. Six years later, Bishop Jerome tendered his resignation to Pope Francis on account of seriously declining health. I learnt later that Bishop Jerome had got into some conflict with his own people in connection with a land dispute. Misunderstandings blow up into big fights especially where wealth is involved. But I refuse to believe that Bishop Jerome could be in the wrong.

I remember him as a man who embodied the teaching of Jesus about love. Loving others was in his very being. I’m sure there were a lot many novices as well as others who felt the same way about him as I did. He was a paragon of humaneness, humility, and selflessness.

Eventually I parted ways so totally with religion that I lost touch with him and most other religious people whom I knew as a young man. Looking back today, I do miss many of them. I’m hesitant, however, to contact any of them and renew friendships simply because I have become an utterly irreligious person. My very being may offend some of them.

I think Bishop Jerome would have been still the same old humane person. He would have given me his distinctive angelic smile if I told him that God refused to make sense to me. No offence. No consternation. No indignation.

I may no longer share his altar, but I still believe in the goodness he embodied.