Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris says Trinidad and To­ba­go seems to have lost its way with con­tin­ued dis­uni­ty be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion and it is up to cit­i­zens to be agents of change. He made the state­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a spe­cial mid­night Mass at the Pro-Cathe­dral of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help, Har­ris Prom­e­nade,?San Fer­nan­do, where a vig­il of prayer and wor­ship was held to mark this coun­try's 50th In­de­pen­dence Day an­niver­sary. Har­ris did not mince words; he knocked both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion mem­bers for hold­ing sep­a­rate In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions. He said when the Union Jack (British flag) was low­ered on the night of Au­gust 31, 1962, "both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion stood to­geth­er wit­ness­ing and re­joic­ing in the birth of this our beloved na­tion. Tonight (yes­ter­day), 50 years lat­er we read that Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion are hold­ing dif­fer­ent cel­e­bra­tions to mark this 50th an­niver­sary."

Har­ris said the present state of af­fairs is not in line with the vi­sion that was cre­at­ed for our na­tion in the year of its birth. "Giv­en the present sce­nario, we must ask our­selves whether or not we have lost our way for, if our lead­ers-Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion-can­not find it in them­selves to put aside their dif­fer­ences for the sake of our na­tion to give com­mit­ment to uni­ty for this very di­vid­ed land of ours, on this most im­por­tant an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence, then some­thing has gone ter­ri­bly wrong and the dream of the fore­fa­thers of the na­tion, 'To­geth­er we as­pire, to­geth­er we achieve,' has been lost," the Arch­bish­op said. In his mes­sage to the na­tion, Har­ris said: "I urge all cit­i­zens to let us love our coun­try. I urge our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all faiths, but es­pe­cial­ly those of our faith, to put coun­try be­fore self and po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion. I urge you elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to work, to en­deav­our to build a unit­ed coun­try of which we can all be proud."

Har­ris, dur­ing his homi­ly, re­cit­ed the prayer that Arch­bish­op Count Fin­bar Ryan de­liv­ered on the his­toric night of T&T's in­de­pen­dence in 1962. He em­pha­sised the end of the prayer which called for this coun­try to be a "na­tion of truth and life, a na­tion of ho­li­ness and grace, a na­tion of jus­tice, love and peace." He lament­ed that sad­ly this as­pect of Ryan's prayer "seems to have fall­en on deaf ears." "The mass mur­ders, the sense­less vi­o­lence, the dis­re­spect and abuse of women and chil­dren, the unchecked cor­rup­tion in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor...it is clear to see the prayer giv­en by Arch­bish­op Ryan 50 years ago has been for­got­ten by many of our peo­ple," he said. He hailed cit­i­zens for show­ing their com­pas­sion for vic­tims of the re­cent Diego Mar­tin flood­ing dis­as­ter. How­ev­er, he said that pas­sion­ate love for fel­low cit­i­zens should be demon­strat­ed more of­ten. "The out­pour­ing of gen­eros­i­ty shown by cit­i­zens of all walks of life dur­ing the re­cent floods tell us that we are ca­pa­ble of pas­sion­ate love. We can­not wait for dis­as­ters to show this love; this must be done every day of our lives," he said. He urged parish­ioners "to be agents of change in our fam­i­lies, in our schools and in our na­tion. For hand in hand, with com­mon vigour and com­mon pur­pose we can make Trinidad and To­ba­go what God in­tend­ed it to be."