Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Amid the hus­tle, bus­tle and bur­geon­ing life of east Port-of-Spain stands the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion. Its blue lime­stone blocks tow­er in­to the sky, rep­re­sent­ing both a ge­o­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal land­mark east of the na­tion’s cap­i­tal.

Through flood­ing and earth­quakes, the moth­er church of the Ro­man Catholic faith in this coun­try has sur­vived the test of time. This year marks 175 years since the Cathe­dral was ded­i­cat­ed and giv­en its hon­orary sta­tus of a Mi­nor Basil­i­ca—a des­ig­na­tion giv­en by Pope Pius IX that holds spe­cial ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal priv­i­leges, his­tor­i­cal im­por­tance, and artis­tic val­ue.

Con­struc­tion be­gan in 1816—the same year work on the An­gli­can Church’s Holy Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral on Queen Street al­so start­ed—and it would take 35 years to com­plete the struc­ture. It was meant to re­place the first Catholic Church in Port-of-Spain, built in 1784 on the site now known as Tamarind Square.

Stand­ing at the edge of In­de­pen­dence Square, the Cathe­dral makes man feel mor­tal. Its stone, quar­ried from Laven­tille, has stood strong and longer than any hu­man can live. Its grandeur hum­bles one’s ego. From the out­side, the in­side of the church looks dim. Up­on en­try, it is the an­tithe­sis of Port-of-Spain life. The si­lence hits you first. The noisy ex­u­ber­ance of the city is left out­side. The light­ing is rev­er­en­tial. The pews, neat­ly placed with pre­cise spac­ing, give or­der to an oth­er­wise chaot­ic world. It reeks of his­to­ry with few mod­ern touch­es.

The Cathe­dral hasn’t been with­out its chal­lenges. In 2012, the arch­dio­cese closed it for re­fur­bish­ment. It was an ar­du­ous four-year process main­ly be­cause of the fi­nances re­quired to re­store such an an­tique struc­ture.

Mon­sign­or Mar­tin Sir­ju, who now serves as ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Cathe­dral, re­mem­bers that defin­ing mo­ment in the life of the moth­er church. “When the re­fur­bish­ment project start­ed in 2012, there was a de­bate as to where the Cathe­dral should go. This was the cen­tre of the square, plen­ty traf­fic, a fair amount of crime as well. There was one sug­ges­tion to move the Cathe­dral west, and an­oth­er sug­ges­tion to move the Cathe­dral cen­tral. In the end, maybe God want­ed the Cathe­dral to stay right here.”

Sir­ju has spent the last eight years there as both ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Cathe­dral and Vic­ar Gen­er­al of the Catholic Church arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. In Jan­u­ary, Pope Leo XIV el­e­vat­ed him to the ti­tle of “Mon­sign­or”—be­stowed on a priest who has dis­tin­guished him­self by ex­cep­tion­al ser­vice. He ad­mits there are unique chal­lenges for the church in the east Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty that they must con­front.

He told the Sun­day Guardian, “We have to have a deep­er aware­ness of where peo­ple are at, reach out to them, help them where we can. Lis­ten­ing is very im­por­tant. Peo­ple find com­fort by lis­ten­ing. We have to re­think the whole agen­da and see how we can be­come more mis­sion­ary and more evan­gel­i­cal.”

With pover­ty, gang wars and crime af­fect­ing the com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing the church, Sir­ju has formed a group that pounds the pave­ments of east Port-of-Spain, start­ing with Nel­son and St Paul Streets, with the aim of lis­ten­ing and tak­ing hope to the down­trod­den. He has al­so part­nered with Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra on Nel­son Street to host sev­er­al church events, in­clud­ing a Lenten Re­treat last Fri­day.

He added, “In east Port-of-Spain, I find the pover­ty more in­tense. It’s clos­er to me. It is said that we un­der­es­ti­mate rur­al pover­ty. In the coun­try­side, you have a lot of pover­ty, but you still have a lot of space. East Port-of-Spain is dense and high­ly pop­u­lat­ed, so the pover­ty is in­tense. We are deal­ing with a large num­ber of peo­ple who are in need and we can’t ser­vice every­body.”

But the com­mu­ni­ty aside, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic pre­sent­ed prob­lems the Cathe­dral is still grap­pling with. The faith­ful haven’t re­turned in the way they did pre-pan­dem­ic. Sir­ju said be­fore COVID, the Cathe­dral could have a con­gre­ga­tion be­tween 100 to 150 peo­ple at Mass. That’s now dipped to rough­ly 100. The rea­sons for a lack of re­vival haven’t been stud­ied, but Sir­ju sus­pects a mix­ture of tech­nol­o­gy, weari­ness of ill­ness­es for old­er peo­ple, and a gen­er­al loss of in­ter­est have con­tributed.

As ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence grows and ac­cess to a spir­i­tu­al life be­comes eas­i­er, the Catholic priest ad­mits the moth­er church is not im­mune to the chal­lenges tech­nol­o­gy pos­es to church­es. How­ev­er, he is con­fi­dent the Cathe­dral will con­tin­ue to play an im­por­tant role for peo­ple search­ing for an­swers.

He stat­ed, “I think here re­mains a sec­tor of liv­ing faith in spite of what may hap­pen dig­i­tal­ly. I think peo­ple will still be drawn to the Cathe­dral. Many pro­nounce on its beau­ty. Some, when they en­ter the front door, they feel drawn in­to this space. I have enough pas­toral work­ers in­ter­est­ed in where the Cathe­dral moves for­ward from here, so I har­bour quite some hope about be­ing here and what will hap­pen in the fu­ture.”

Through­out its 175-year his­to­ry, that fu­ture would have been in ques­tion many times. Yet, the struc­ture con­tin­ues to stand as an em­blem of the Catholic Church’s work and mis­sion in Port-of-Spain.

The Cathe­dral has seen many oth­er tow­ers rise along­side it as the cap­i­tal has grown. It con­tin­ues to watch over a city that evolves with time, but as one walks in­to the grand church, it feels like time stands still. Per­haps no tech­nol­o­gy will ever be able to give a hu­man that feel­ing.