Sascha?Wil­son

A Ro­man Catholic priest broke from tra­di­tion and blessed no toys dur­ing the­cel­e­bra­tionof the Feast of the Holy In­no­cents at the La­dy of Per­pet­u­al­Help Church in San­Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.

Fa­ther Mar­tin Sir­ju had asked par­ents not to bring their chil­dren's toys to church.

In­stead, he anoint­ed the chil­dren's fore­head with blessed oil, placed his hands on their heads and said a silent prayer for each of them. Sir­ju said there was noth­ing wrong with bless­ing the toys.

"I don't think it is wrong to bless the toys. I just don't think to­day is the day to do it."

Sir­ju said he re­searched it and did not see the sig­nif­i­cance in bless­ing the toys, ex­cept that it is a tra­di­tion in T&T.

Sir­ju­said the bless­ing of the toys cheap­ens the true mean­ing of the Feast. A few­parish­ioners who did­not know about the priest ear­li­er re­quest brought their chil­dren's toys to church.The toys re­mained on the pew while the chil­dren went for­ward to be blessed. It has be­come a tra­di­tion for­par­ents and­guardians to take their chil­dren to church with their Christ­mas toys­to be blessed.

The Feast on De­cem­ber 28 is in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the mas­sacre of male chil­dren, be­tween the ages oft­wo years old and un­der, or­dered by King Herod in Beth­le­hem in an at­tempt to kill ba­by Je­sus.

The priest used the oc­ca­sion to com­ment on vi­o­lence met­ed out against chil­dren in var­i­ous forms, in­clud­ing through phys­i­cal abuse andthe lack of love and ed­u­ca­tion.

"The lack of love is form of vi­o­lence against chil­dren," he said.

He said one of the great­est re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of par­ents was to love the chil­dren they bring in­to the world, but not­ed that many chil­dren, in­clud­ing teenagers, some­times cry out to him and his col­leagues­for love and at­ten­tion.

"How do we start to take away vi­o­lence from a vi­o­lent Trinidad, we start by lov­ing our chil­dren."

An­oth­er form of vi­o­lence against chil­dren, he said, was the lack of ed­u­ca­tion, es­pe­cial­ly of peo­ple inthe low­er in­come brack­et.

Not­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of the prison pop­u­la­tion was il­lit­er­ate and many suf­fer from men­tal ill­ness, he said: 'This is thenet ef­fect of ne­glect by many stake­hold­ers not just in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem but a net­work of peo­ple that ne­glect­when it comes to ed­u­ca­tion, con­tribut­ing to the vi­o­lence that we see in our so­ci­ety and the lack of prop­er ed­u­ca­tion of the poor is it­self a next vi­o­len­ce­in­flicte­don them."

An­oth­er form of mas­sacre of the in­no­cence, he said was the lev­el of phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse in the coun­try.

He said his friend, a li­cenced ther­a­pist, who came here to work af­ter work­ing with low in­come fam­i­lies in the­Unit­ed States told him the lev­el of phys­i­cal vi­o­lence in­flict­ed up­on chil­dren in T&T was much more wide­spread than in New York.

Say­ing that peo­ple need­ed to re­late in more a peace­ful man­ner, he said the first ex­am­ple has to be set by the par­ents.

"If they do not com­mu­ni­cate in a peace­ful way to their chil­dren, their chil­dren­will not com­mu­ni­cate in a peace­ful way."

Sir­ju said the fourth way, a more sub­tle way, in which vi­o­lence was met­ed out to chil­dren was by not bap­tis­ing them.

Teach­ing chil­dren car­ols and the scrip­tures, he said, should not on­ly be the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the church.

He said some chil­dren could re­cite by heart songs from the US and Ja­maica, but they do not know Christ­mas songs by heart.