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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Fr Tang Kai calls for end to violence

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2273 days ago
20190420
Fr Leslie Tang Kai venerates the cross during the Good Friday procession in Mason Hall, Tobago.

Fr Leslie Tang Kai venerates the cross during the Good Friday procession in Mason Hall, Tobago.

CasandraThompson-Forbes

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.”


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