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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Father Michael Makhan 1938-2021 — from Chaguanas to Mount St Benedict

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1411 days ago
20210829
Father Michael Makhan

Father Michael Makhan

By Si­mone De­lochan

Fa­ther Michael Makhan was or­dained in 1963, in the third batch of sem­i­nar­i­ans to be trained at the new­ly opened Sem­i­nary. His move­ment to priest­hood re­veals the sub­tle work of God in tak­ing this man from hum­ble be­gin­nings in Ch­agua­nas to be­come one of the coun­try’s most-beloved priests. Fa­ther Makhan died on Au­gust 25, 2021 af­ter more than five decades of ser­vice as a Priest.

Fa­ther Makhan is the fourth of 11 chil­dren born in 1938 to Jag­ger­nauth and Ri­ta Makhan née Fran­cis. He at­tend­ed Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment school. This re­placed the Cana­di­an Mis­sion­ary In­di­an school which pro­vid­ed ed­u­ca­tion to the poor chil­dren of East In­di­an de­scent from the es­tates.

Ed­u­ca­tion was em­pha­sised as the way out of pover­ty by his par­ents and the par­ents of many of the East In­di­an labour­ers, and his ear­li­est mem­o­ries of his school­mates were of shy es­tate chil­dren. “What I re­mem­bered, the In­di­an chil­dren from the sug­ar fac­to­ry area, Wood­ford Lodge area, used to bring their roti to school wrapped up in a pa­per bag for lunch. Some who lived not too far from the Ch­agua­nas school would go home for lunch, as we did.”

The cur­ricu­lum pro­vid­ed tute­lage in the fun­da­men­tal skills of Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish, and Do­mes­tic Sci­ence. His fa­ther Jag­ger­nauth had been a pupil teacher in his younger day, em­ployed at $1 a week by the prin­ci­pal to teach the low­er class­es. His fa­ther, how­ev­er, did not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther train­ing at Na­pari­ma Train­ing Col­lege as was typ­i­cal­ly the case.

Jag­ger­nauth’s par­ents, who were orig­i­nal­ly from Cal­cut­ta, In­dia and lived in a one-roomed bar­rack with­out ven­ti­la­tion, de­cid­ed that teach­ing was not the way for their son. In­stead he be­came a tai­lor trained by Basan­to, a fam­i­ly friend.

Fa­ther Makhan’s par­ents’ mar­riage was arranged by a pun­dit when Jag­ger­nauth was 18, to a 15-year-old Ri­ta Fran­cis. “My moth­er and fa­ther got mar­ried qui­et­ly in the War­den’s Of­fice, Ch­agua­nas. There was no Hin­du cer­e­mo­ny…From what my moth­er told me, there was no cel­e­bra­tion. They went home and ate dhal, rice and roti.”

The Catholic back­ground

His moth­er and her sib­lings’ con­ver­sion to Catholi­cism came as a re­sult of a vis­it­ing Irish priest, Fa­ther Layne, who had learnt a few words of Hin­di. It was with awe that he was looked up­on as he walked the streets call­ing out to the labour­ers in their own lan­guage. Ri­ta and her sib­lings were bap­tised on the Feast of St Fran­cis of As­sisi, and then changed their sur­name from Ra­goo­bar-Ma­haraj to ‘Fran­cis’.

The Makhan fam­i­ly lived on Rail­way Road close to the Catholic Church. The road was a hub of ac­tiv­i­ty, with crowds con­gre­gat­ing to see the trains ar­rive and de­part, ven­dors with wind­mills and ‘chill­i­bib­bi’. He re­mem­bers see­ing Syr­i­ans with their bales of cloth for sale.

The ac­tu­al Church en­vi­ron­ment was less than hos­pitable for the Makhans. He says: “When we at­tempt­ed to go to the Catholic church, the priest was hos­tile and ar­ro­gant. Fa­ther Max Mur­phy was his name…it was these kin­da ‘high-fa­lutin’ kin­da peo­ple. We didn’t feel com­fort­able with them, so we went to the low­er-class church, the Pres­by­ter­ian Church.”

In the Pres­by­ter­ian Church, the fam­i­ly found com­mu­ni­ty. The Hin­dus sat on one side and the Chris­tians on the oth­er and they would sing Hin­di songs. “I re­mem­ber singing ‘Oh hap­py day’ and it was so ex­hil­a­rat­ing for us. I was about sev­en years. We loved go­ing to the Pres­by­ter­ian Church be­cause the peo­ple were friend­ly.” The Catholic Church, he ex­pressed, was an un­friend­ly Church be­cause it was an elit­ist Church.

The Port-of-Spain Years

At nine years old, in 1947, he and his fam­i­ly moved to Port-of-Spain. William H Scott had asked his fa­ther if he was in­ter­est­ed in an­oth­er job op­tion: “If you get a truck, you could haul ma­te­ri­als from the brick fac­to­ry, in Ch­agua­nas, and you could sup­ply me and I will sell it re­tail.” Jag­ger­nauth got his li­cence and with a friend pur­chased a truck.

The fam­i­ly then moved to a six-bed­roomed house on Hen­ry Street close to Rosary Church. They were the on­ly brown-skinned fam­i­ly in the area and re­ceived no wel­come. He de­scribes it as a cul­ture shock.

“In Ch­agua­nas every­body was friends. Every­body called out to each oth­er. When we went to Church we couldn’t sit on the pews; we had to stand up on the side aisles dur­ing the Mass…We felt we had no roots here… Even when we passed them on the road, and said ‘Good morn­ing’, they would turn their heads and not an­swer us.”

Rosary Boys’ and then St Mary’s Col­lege were his points of sal­va­tion. At Rosary Boys’ they would go to Bene­dic­tion and he fell in love with the rit­u­al of in­cense and the ring­ing of the bell. He be­came an al­tar serv­er at Rosary Church. He joined the Le­gion of Mary at St Mary’s and lat­er be­came Vice-Pres­i­dent. Fa­ther Regi­nald ‘Rex’ de Four was Pres­i­dent.

Af­ter pass­ing his A’Lev­els, he knew he want­ed to be­come a priest and to join the Holy Ghost Fa­thers but this was quick­ly laid aside af­ter a brief con­ver­sa­tion with Fa­ther Knol­ly Knox, who gen­tly and eu­phemisti­cal­ly said that they were “not ready for you yet”. It was Arch­bish­op Fin­bar Ryan who sug­gest­ed he vis­it the sem­i­nary at Mount St Bene­dict.

So one Sat­ur­day morn­ing, he rode his bike from Port-of-Spain to Mt St Bene­dict, push­ing it the fi­nal me­tres up the moun­tain­side to the small build­ing. He saw a Broth­er feed­ing pi­geons. He en­tered the gate and en­coun­tered fa­mil­iar faces: “I saw Fa­ther Oliveire, Fa­ther Cyril Ross, Fa­ther Hezeki­ah. I said wait, I know all of you.” He knew he had found the place for the im­por­tant guid­ance in be­com­ing a priest. “When I en­tered the sem­i­nary, I loved it.”


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