Kali­fa Clyne

Fr Odo van der Hei­jdt, de­spite be­ing born in Hol­land and re­ceiv­ing a pen­sion from that coun­try, yes­ter­day was de­scribed as "Tri­ni to the bone" by Ab­bot Fr John Pereira.In de­liv­er­ing the homi­ly at his fu­ner­al, Fr Pereira said Van der Hei­jdt, the for­mer pri­or at Our La­dy of Ex­ile, Mt St Bene­dict, was Dutch by birth but West In­di­an by choice."He may have been born in the Nether­lands, he may have had a Dutch pass­port and he may have been get­ting a pen­sion from the Dutch Gov­ern­ment, how­ev­er, if you re­al­ly want­ed to know where he came from, where his heart tru­ly lay, you sim­ply had to tell him that the West In­dies crick­et team lost again and then you would have un­der­stood," Pereira said."I think that he suf­fered more pain to­wards the end of his life from the mis­er­able state of West In­dies crick­et than from any phys­i­cal or med­ical com­plaint," he added.

He said Van der Hei­jdt was al­ways there for the peo­ple.He added: "We are talk­ing about a man who gave 60 years of his life to the Mount and to the pil­grims who vis­it­ed this place day af­ter day. We are talk­ing about a man who tru­ly lived the Bene­dic­tine vow of sta­bil­i­ty."His love for Caribbean cul­ture was epit­o­mised in his love for the dis­cours­es of Paul Keens-Dou­glas and es­pe­cial­ly Tantie Mer­le at the Oval."Van der Hei­jdt was said to have had a pas­sion for crick­et and rep­re­sent­ed the monastery as their wick­et­keep­er on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions against the sem­i­nary. Pereira said that was in­deed a cul­tur­al tran­si­tion as Hol­land was on­ly now emerg­ing on the world crick­et­ing map.

He said Van der Hei­jdt al­so of­ten looked for­ward to a juicy game of all-fours."God pro­vid­ed Fr Odo with a com­mu­ni­ty of brethren whom he was able to serve in di­verse ways and for the past ten years as their pri­or."God pro­vid­ed Fr Odo with per­sons who sought to find peace in their hearts and who taught Fr Odo what true faith is. He en­coun­tered these per­sons in the par­lour min­istry and their sto­ries helped to in­crease his own faith."He has al­ways been grate­ful to the pil­grims who come to the Mount day af­ter day. He once said that in the monastery he was in­tro­duced to the psalms but it was the pil­grims who taught him how to pray," Pereira added. Van der Hei­jdt died on Sun­day at the age of 83.