Com­ment­ing on the con­tro­ver­sy caused by Ma­ha Sab­ha Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Sat Ma­haraj’s re­cent state­ments about To­bag­o­ni­ans, a Ro­man Catholic priest based on the is­land said peo­ple can choose to ig­nore the neg­a­tiv­i­ty.

“Of­ten peo­ple use deroga­to­ry state­ments, but we of­ten have a choice to let it af­fect us or to ig­nore it,” Fr Leslie Tang Kai said yes­ter­day af­ter lead­ing a Good Fri­day pro­ces­sion through the streets of Ma­son Hall, To­ba­go.

“Christ in his own time was re­ject­ed by his own Jew­ish peo­ple and pained by the Ro­man au­thor­i­ty, but Christ was faith­ful to what God called him to be. God sent his son in­to the world to suf­fer, to die and to rise again that we, each one of us, might be­come God’s good­ness and so love is the means to God’s good­ness.”

Dur­ing the pro­ces­sion, which end­ed at the St An­tho­ny’s RC Church, Fr Tang Kai called for an end in vi­o­lence and ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to love one an­oth­er as Christ loved. Ap­peal­ing for an end to ha­tred, he said many say the words ‘I love you’ but rarely un­der­stand the mean­ing.

“I want to share with us what love sym­bol­is­es, L-O-V-E Let Our Vi­o­lence End. Very of­ten we fail to love be­cause our love is so self-cen­tred, we think about our­selves and what is in it for me. Of­ten, a young man may say to a young la­dy, ‘I love you’ and promise the earth, the sky, the stars, but in re­al­i­ty, he can’t even af­ford a plane tick­et,” he said.

“Love is not about ro­mance, it’s not about pas­sion, love is about truth and val­ue. If we love one an­oth­er, we will val­ue each oth­er’s per­son­age. If we will put down the ha­tred be­cause God is love and in God, there is no vi­o­lence, there’s no ha­tred” he said.

Fr Tang Kai said the Arch­dio­cese in Trinidad and To­ba­go is set to as­sist with re­fur­bish­ment ef­forts at the his­toric mon­u­ment Notre Dame Cathe­dral in Paris, France, which was par­tial­ly dam­aged by fire on Mon­day. He de­scribed the event as a great loss to Catholics around the world and said a call would be made for a spe­cial col­lec­tion in T&T to aid in re­fur­bish­ment ef­forts

“It is a great loss, and while we here in the Arch­dio­cese of Port of Spain gath­ered on that Mon­day af­ter­noon to cel­e­brate and to re­new our priest­ly com­mit­ment to God’s peo­ple, there’s the Cathe­dral in Paris be­ing de­stroyed by fire and so it is a great loss, a great loss, not just for the church, but the uni­ver­sal world.

“More than like­ly, the Arch­bish­op of Port of Spain the Rev­erend Charles Ja­son Gor­don will call for a spe­cial col­lec­tion or some­thing to aid the church of Notre Dame Cathe­dral.”