Kevon Felmine

Af­ter lead­ing hun­dreds of Catholics on the ar­du­ous jour­ney up the San Fer­nan­do Hill yes­ter­day, Mon­sign­or Chris­t­ian Per­reira lament­ed over the mis­man­age­ment of the coun­try's nat­ur­al re­sources.How­ev­er, in speak­ing to parish­ioners of Our La­dy of Per­pet­u­al Help dur­ing the cathe­dral's an­nu­al Good Fri­day Sta­tions of the Cross re-en­act­ment, Per­reira said the greater con­cern was the abun­dance of PALE Gas which con­tin­ued to de­te­ri­o­rate so­ci­ety.

With rain threat­en­ing to drench wor­ship­pers, Per­reira ex­plained that PALE Gas, an acronym he coined from the sev­en dead­ly or cap­i­tal sins: Pride, Avarice, Lust, En­vy, Glut­tony, Anger and Sloth, leads to the spir­i­tu­al cor­rup­tion of peo­ple whose life will then be con­sumed by sin.He said those sins were preva­lent in to­day's so­ci­ety and it is this that is tru­ly de­stroy­ing our na­tion.

"As we stand at the point over­look­ing the great na­tion and par­tic­u­lar­ly some of the re­sources of our na­tion, those re­sources that have made Trinidad and To­ba­go eco­nom­i­cal­ly rich for many decades, the oil and gas that come from un­der the ground and out in the sea, have been both a bless­ing and a curse to our na­tion," Per­reira said.

"We have not al­ways man­aged the re­sources prop­er­ly, as ev­i­denced from the re­cent and on­go­ing dis­as­ter in La Brea and sur­round­ing ar­eas. We have not al­ways man­aged the prof­its of the oil and gas prop­er­ly, as ev­i­denced by the state of our health, ed­u­ca­tion and hous­ing re­al­i­ties to name a few.

"How­ev­er, my re­al con­cern this morn­ing is not the gas that comes from the earth and the sea, but some­thing far more po­tent. Af­ter my per­son­al ex­plo­ration with­in my­self and seek­ing to un­der­stand the hu­man land­scape, I have come to re­alise that in spite of the fact that we have been so abun­dant­ly blessed, our so­ci­ety con­tin­ues to de­te­ri­o­rate be­cause of the PALE Gas we pro­duce."

From as ear­ly as 5 am yes­ter­day, Catholics young and old gath­ered for the an­nu­al hol­i­day tra­di­tion in re­mem­brance of the suf­fer­ing that Je­sus Christ ex­pe­ri­enced in the lead up to his cru­ci­fix­ion. Twelve cross­es were po­si­tioned along the hill and at each point wor­ship­pers gen­u­flect­ed and prayed be­fore mov­ing on. Even as the rain came, some whipped out um­brel­las while oth­ers bore the weath­er for the sake of their re­li­gion.