Shas­tri Boodan

Car­oli­na, a qui­et com­mu­ni­ty in cen­tral Trinidad, over­flowed with joy and cel­e­bra­tion on Mon­day as parish­ioners re­turned to wor­ship at the Our La­dy of Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion Church for the first time in 15 years.

The sound of hymns filled the streets as the faith­ful processed with a stat­ue of the Blessed Vir­gin—sal­vaged from the orig­i­nal wood­en church, which had stood since the 1950s. For many, this was more than the re­open­ing of a build­ing; it was the re­vival of a spir­i­tu­al home once thought lost.

The church first opened in 1956 un­der Count Fin­bar Ryan, but decades of ne­glect and harsh weath­er took their toll. The last Mass was cel­e­brat­ed in 2010. Ser­vices strug­gled on un­til 2017, when tor­ren­tial rains and vi­o­lent winds tore away the roof, leav­ing the con­gre­ga­tion with­out shel­ter. In the years that fol­lowed, num­bers dwin­dled. Some parish­ioners sought new places of wor­ship, while oth­ers drift­ed away al­to­geth­er.

Yet Car­oli­na’s Catholics nev­er aban­doned hope. A turn­ing point came in 2022 with the ap­point­ment of Fa­ther Trevor Nathas­ingh as parish priest of Cou­va. Dis­cov­er­ing a small but stead­fast group still cling­ing to their faith, he of­fered not on­ly pas­toral care but al­so a vi­sion of re­new­al.

By 2023, ec­u­meni­cal sup­port strength­ened the mis­sion when the Pres­by­te­ri­ans of Car­oli­na opened their doors, wel­com­ing the Catholic com­mu­ni­ty as tem­po­rary guests. Parish­ioners ral­lied, host­ing fundrais­ers and pool­ing re­sources to re­build. What once seemed im­pos­si­ble slow­ly be­came re­al­i­ty.

Mon­day’s re­open­ing was noth­ing short of tri­umphant. A rosary pro­ces­sion wound through the vil­lage, men, women, and chil­dren singing and pray­ing as the new church gleamed in the back­ground.

Dur­ing the homi­ly, Rev­erend Dea­con Andy Singh re­mind­ed the faith­ful of the date’s sig­nif­i­cance: Sep­tem­ber 8, the Na­tiv­i­ty of the Blessed Vir­gin Mary. With emo­tion, Fa­ther Nathas­ingh called the re­built church a “gift of the Holy Spir­it, the in­ter­ces­sion of God, and the gen­eros­i­ty of the parish­ioners.”

He al­so ad­dressed Mary’s role with­in Catholic faith, clar­i­fy­ing that she is not wor­shipped but ho­n­oured.

“When we ho­n­our the Blessed Vir­gin Mary, we are ho­n­our­ing one who we un­der­stand as the first dis­ci­ple of the Lord, be­cause no one knows the in­ti­ma­cy of Je­sus as his moth­er.”

Fa­ther Nathas­ingh urged his flock to hold firm de­spite crit­i­cism.

“Stop be­ing in­tim­i­dat­ed be­cause they do not know what they are talk­ing about. Any­body could take up Scrip­ture and say ‘the Bible say so,’ even if they quot­ing it out of con­text. That’s why I keep telling you—you got to read it, you got to know it, so you can stand up to the truth of what your faith teach­es you.”