Sad Demise
Paulites of Belgaum Worldwide
Sad Demise;
With grief I inform you all of the demise of Rev.Fr Agnelo Pinto. s.j. @ 11.50am in Goa,
Will be updating you all of the further details,
MAY HIS SOUL REST IN PEACE
Dinesh Vijay Patel
for Paulites of Belgaum Worldwide
· Paulites · School · Community
"BRING LIGHT TO THE WORLD AROUND YOU, BY YOUR ACTIONS"
Paulites of Belgaum Worldwide
A
tribute to Father Agnelo Pinto, SJ
By Sanjay Bhosale
Some people are destined for greatness without ever seeking it. Rev Fr Agnelo Pinto, S.J., was one such person. As Principal of St Paul’s High School from 1979 to 1991 and Manager from 2005-2006, he cut a towering figure at the venerable institution.
An alumnus of the school himself, of the 1954-55 batch, Fr Agnelo had an early calling to join the priesthood and become a teacher. Many of us thought him handsome enough to be a movie star, but such earthly pursuits were not for him. The fact that he was appointed principal of his own alma mater, aged just 39, testifies to his enormous capabilities and talents as an educationist and administrator.
I had the good fortune to be under the tutelage of Fr Agnelo as a pupil of St Paul’s from 1979 to 1985. In fact, he was the person who granted me admission to the school in Standard V, after Fr Toscano had turned me down repeatedly during the previous four years.
After Fr Agnelo took over as Principal, he asked me to take two tests – English and Maths – and he gave me admission despite the fact that I scored 23/25 in English but only 9/25 in Maths. His actual words to my parents were: “We’ll give him a chance.” I will remain forever grateful for that ‘chance’, which shaped my life and career from that point on.
He was a fair but firm man, always amenable to reason, even from us mere students. As class monitor and member of the school cabinet, I recall leading a delegation of angry and upset Class students to his office over the issue of wearing long pants in Class X. The school policy was no long pants, but we managed to convince Fr Angelo that this was a harsh policy (one student, I won’t name him, showed Father the abundant hair on his legs and complained that it was embarrassing to walk around like that, especially given our lovely neighbours across the road). As a compromise, Father allowed us to wear long pants after the Christmas holidays till the final exams in March.
He showed the same flexibility on the question of cricket, which the school considered a waste of time and therefore did not have an intra-school competition or enter a team in inter-school tournaments. In 1984, we (the Class of 1985) managed to convince Father to allow us to play an intra-school tournament, which he grudgingly permitted. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that India had won the World Cup in England the previous year. So it wasn’t such a waste of time after all!
Off we all went to the sports room, collected the equipment that had been gathering dust for years, and played a match on ‘A’ ground. I still remember how I got out – my foot got entangled in a hole in the mat near the batsman’s crease, and the bails got dislodged even though the ball was nowhere near the stumps. There was no third umpire back then!
Fr Agnelo was loved, admired, respected, even feared by some, and dare I say it, disliked by a few. But the few would have to be in the very small minority, having earned his wrath on something that he would have perceived as wrong or not permissible.
Indeed he dished out punishment as a necessary part of his job, without taking any pleasure in it. The fair ruler or biscuit was liberally applied to those who came late, or without shoes, or had unacceptably long hair. But the purpose of the punishment was as much punitive as it was corrective.
A trip to his office was universally dreaded – I think perhaps even by the teachers. No one wanted to be in his bad books, and many of us went out of our way to be in his good books. As a bugler, I had ample opportunity to do this. I lived close to the school, and he would ride by my house on his TVS to give me advance notice of a special occasion for which playing the Last Post was required, things like the death of a former school priest, or a national leader. Have an extra egg and a glass of milk for energy, he would tell me.
The first time he did this, I nearly died of fright. Why was the Principal standing outside my house, I wondered in alarm! Imagine my relief when he told me the purpose of his visit.
Being a mischievous sort, I made more than a few trips to his office and often got a taste of the biscuit, but being a bugler had its advantages, and he was quick to forgive my smaller indiscretions. I’m sure many of our schoolmates would have their own stories of being summoned to his office for special attention.
There are far too many experiences that I had with him over six long years (they seemed long then) to recount here. But the last time I saw him as a pupil was at our Passing Out Parade in 1985.
Fast forward to February 2010, and I had the privilege of travelling with him from Goa to Belgaum for our batch’s Silver Jubilee reunion, which he had graciously agreed to attend. I was assigned the task of picking him up from Raia and bringing him to the school.
On the five-hour drive via Sawantwadi and Chandgad, we had a long conversation about the school and his years as principal and manager. I got a sense from his replies to my questions that he had a profound sense of duty above all else, that whatever he did he perceived as being for the greater good – of the school, the church, the Society of Jesus, the community and the individual concerned.
I mentioned to him that some students perceived things differently and a few of them were still bitter about some of their experiences in school. It is a measure of his greatness and his humility that the next day, during his reunion address, he apologised for this, saying he was sorry if any of us felt he had been harsh or unfair.
For the duration of his visit, we had offered to put him up at one of the city hotels, but he politely declined and instead spent the time at Jesuit House – an indication of his lifelong personal choice of austerity and self-denial in the service of God and his fellow man.
At our reunion the next morning, he delivered a thoughtful address, highlighting his passion for serving others and exhorting us to do something for the upliftment of the communities surrounding Belgaum. The power of his message is reflected in the work that is now being done around Belgaum by the Class of 1985 and the Paulites of Belgaum Worldwide, which was formed soon after the reunion.
At the end of the official reunion program, we all stood to sing the national anthem and I remember that his distinctive voice was the loudest of all.
That much loved voice is now silenced forever. Death has taken Fr Agnelo from us but he lives on in our hearts. His life’s work continues through the lakhs of young lives that he moulded to be beacons of light to those around us – as the words of our school anthem, which he sang at the assembly countless times, exhort us to do.
Rest in peace Father Agnelo. We salute you and thank you for the role you played in shaping and moulding our lives.
Canberra, 4 March 2015
