The stat­ue of Our La­dy of Fa­ti­ma at the Mar­i­an Shrine, in Laven­tille, was re­cent­ly de­cap­i­tat­ed by a light­ning strike. This hap­pened just one day af­ter cel­e­brat­ing the hun­dredth ap­pear­ance of Vir­gin Mary in a field in Fa­ti­ma, Por­tu­gal.

Some peo­ple in­ter­pret­ed this as an act of god, a sign from heav­ens that our Mak­er is an­gry.

In the USA, when light­ing re­cent­ly struck the White House peo­ple filled Twit­ter say­ing God was send­ing a sig­nal to Pres­i­dent Trump. Psalm 29:7 states, “The voice of the Lord strikes with flash­es of light­ning”.

From Oc­cam’s ra­zor analy­sis the most plau­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion is light­en­ing strikes the high­est ob­jects. The 62- feet tall “touch­down” Je­sus stat­ue in Ohio was de­stroyed by light­en­ing in 2010 and Rio’s fa­mous “Christ the Re­deemer” stat­ue had its fair share of hits.

To cer­tain born-again Chris­tians, re­li­gious stat­ues are idols and have no place in wor­ship, but to oth­ers they have great sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance.

Some of our in­dige­nous cit­i­zens might won­der why the Colum­bus stat­ue did not suf­fer a sim­i­lar fate. The de­bate on its re­moval re­mains an is­sue. I think we can leave it but have a plaque ex­press­ing Colum­bus was re­spon­si­ble for the geno­cide of a peo­ple.

We can build a statute of our in­dige­nous Amerindi­an Chief Hyari­ma at the Red House which cov­ers an Amerindi­an ar­chae­o­log­i­cal site.

It is iron­ic the same Colum­bus who dec­i­mat­ed the “pa­gans and hea­thens na­tives,” brought Chris­tian­i­ty to these shores.

Three mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, one sen­a­tor, two coun­cil­lors, two mem­bers of the cler­gy and work­ers from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment vis­it­ed the site.

The ques­tion now aris­es, is it that tax­pay­ers dol­lars are to be used to re­pair a church?

What about sep­a­ra­tion of church from state?

The Catholic church is ac­tu­al­ly the rich­est re­li­gion in the world and owns some of the great­est art works ever made. It al­so has vast gold de­posits and bil­lions of dol­lars in as­sets.

On June 20, 2019, when peo­ple broke in and de­stroyed nine mur­tis at the Shree Ram Dhaam Hin­du Tem­ple in Diego Mar­tin, for­mer Trinidad To­ba­go High Com­mis­sion­er to In­dia, Pun­dit Manideo Per­sad said, “The sus­pects were aim­ing to set the en­tire tem­ple on fire. It is ab­hor­rent that a tem­ple, with a pres­ence in this com­mu­ni­ty for al­most 40 years, should be at­tacked.”

Pun­dit Tewari al­so lament­ed that this was not an iso­lat­ed event.

In June 2018, the Low­er Mc Bean Hin­du Mandir in Cou­va suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate.

I hope cit­i­zens can now rest as­sured that any dam­age to oth­er holy places will re­ceive the same at­ten­tion, least per­sons feel cer­tain re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions re­ceive pref­er­en­tial treat­ment in this land.

I am not sure the as­sem­bly of such es­teemed peo­ple were re­al­ly need­ed to check the stat­ue.

I al­so await the Min­is­ter of Health to ed­u­cate his col­leagues the same way he did to Ms Saman­tha Ramis­c­hand.

Was the gath­er­ing ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary? Could the pledges have been made from home? Is it worth risk­ing their own and oth­er lives? Us­ing Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s words were they “wor­ship­ping on the al­tar of stu­pid­i­ty”?

We need all these hard-work­ing MPs to re­main COVID free to serve us for the next five years .

This stat­ue has graced the pres­ence of the area and I con­grat­u­late these do­na­tions but there are liv­ing breath­ing per­sons right around the area who are in need of food, med­i­cine and lap­tops for their chil­dren who have been wait­ing for the MOWT to deal with drainage, land slip­page, ma­jor pot holes pre­vent­ing ac­cess their homes. They may feel a stat­ue is re­ceiv­ing more at­ten­tion than them.

Re­al lives mat­ter not pieces of stone .

Vis­it rape vic­tims, pray and pay for coun­selling ser­vices which are woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate.

Vic­tims of crime, chil­dren who lost par­ents to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and sui­cide re­cent­ly would feel a sense of sup­port for sched­uled vis­its from mem­bers of such a pres­ti­gious team.

We have an ag­ing pop­u­la­tion and cer­tain land­marks help re­tain our mem­o­ry.

I still re­mem­ber as a school boy go­ing to Wool­worth, Ba­ta, Kir­pala­nis and Smith and Al­fred.

I was dis­mayed when we were not able to stop the de­struc­tion of the al­most 200 year old Greyfri­ars Church on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.

Di­ane Barthel, in His­toric Preser­va­tion: Col­lec­tive Mem­o­ry and His­toric Iden­ti­ty, said, “Re­li­gious struc­tures play a spe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant part in the col­lec­tive mem­o­ry as places where mo­ments in per­son­al his­to­ry be­come part of the flow of col­lec­tive his­to­ry. This col­lec­tive his­to­ry tran­scends in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences and life­times.”

Yes we need the stat­ue but re­al lives mat­ter too.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The two PNM MPs and the par­ty’s PRO, who vis­it­ed the Laven­tille Shrine to sur­vey the dam­age done to the Our La­dy of Fa­ti­ma stat­ue by a light­ning strike, pledged $2,500 each to­wards the re­pair. An as­sess­ment is be­ing done to the stat­ue to de­ter­mine the cost of re­pairs or whether the stat­ue should be re­placed en­tire­ly.

MP Fos­ter Cum­mings did in­di­cate on the vis­it to the shrine that he ex­pect­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic and parish­ioners of the Ro­man Catholic Church to con­tribute to the cost of the re­pairs.