Car­ol Quash

He may not be a fa­ther in the tra­di­tion­al sense of the word, but for the past 50 years, Mon­sign­or Chris­t­ian Pereira has as­sumed the role of “Fa­ther” to thou­sands of parish­ioners through­out Trinidad. Pereira was or­dained to the priest­hood in 1976 and was be­stowed with the ti­tle of mon­sign­or in recog­ni­tion of his dis­tin­guished ser­vice to the Church in 2003. He has al­so served as Cathe­dral ad­min­is­tra­tor, Vic­ar Gen­er­al and Arch­dioce­san ad­min­is­tra­tor.

“On Sun­day, June 27, 1976, Arch­bish­op Pan­tin or­dained three of us – Bish­op Clyde Har­vey, Car­los Roberts, who be­came an An­gli­can priest, and me,” Pereira told WE Life & Cul­ture in an in­ter­view at his home in Trinci­ty – one he shares with his sis­ter, Maria.

The Mon­sign­or and the Bish­op will mark their gold­en ju­bilee with a cel­e­bra­tion at the place where it all be­gan – the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion, in Port-of-Spain, at 10 am.

“I’ve served in many dif­fer­ent ar­eas of Trinidad,” Pereira re­called.

“All in all, it has been a way of al­low­ing me to in­ter­act with peo­ple at dif­fer­ent lev­els of the so­ci­ety.”

Fol­low­ing his or­di­na­tion, he served at the Cathe­dral be­fore be­ing as­signed to Siparia, and lat­er in the Laven­tille/Mor­vant parish. He was sent to Point Fortin be­fore re­turn­ing to the Cathe­dral, and sub­se­quent­ly be­ing as­signed to Ari­ma. He was then post­ed at San Fer­nan­do, fol­lowed by a re­as­sign­ment to the Cathe­dral in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

“Cel­e­brat­ing 50 years as a priest, I’m grate­ful to God. I mean, there are times when I won­dered if I’d ever make it to 50 years old…So I’m in my 70s now, and with all my health chal­lenges, I said, ‘Lord, pre­serve me un­til I reach 50 years as a priest.’ And I’m hap­py that I can look for­ward to that cel­e­bra­tion.”

For him, the priest­hood has al­ways been about serv­ing his parish­ioners and work­ing along­side oth­er priests and lay peo­ple. And as the church evolved over time, he made sure the pur­pose of his min­istry re­mained firm.

“Not al­ways was I ful­ly com­fort­able, ei­ther with the pace or the way things were evolv­ing. But I cer­tain­ly made sure, al­ways, that wher­ev­er I served, peo­ple were first. So that as the struc­tures of the church evolved, my main in­ten­tion was to en­sure that the peo­ple, my parish­ioners, would ei­ther un­der­stand or would feel com­fort­able that the church still cared about them…So my in­ten­tion was, while I would be par­tic­u­lar­ly com­mit­ted to want­i­ng the church to de­vel­op and evolve, I al­ways was try­ing to make sure that my parish­ioners un­der­stood that they are an im­por­tant part of the evo­lu­tion, and that they have to grow and evolve as well.”

Pereira’s call­ing to min­istry came when he was a teenag­er, af­ter at­tend­ing Mass at the church in Mor­vant. The mes­sage and the man­ner in which it was de­liv­ered touched his heart and led him in­to the priest­hood.

“I start­ed to go to the sem­i­nary a few times, and I joined in 1970. At the sem­i­nary, we de­vel­oped our prayer life, dis­ci­pline, and we did dif­fer­ent as­pects of the­ol­o­gy – about the sacra­ments, about mass, about the re­la­tion­ship of hu­man be­ings to God. The first two years were more philo­soph­i­cal, go­ing through the dif­fer­ent types of philoso­phers; what peo­ple call athe­ist philoso­phers, and Chris­t­ian philoso­phers, try­ing to deal with what they un­der­stood by life and the world.”

Pereira holds a de­gree in the­ol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He said his sem­i­nary train­ing al­so in­volved a ro­ta­tion of do­mes­tic du­ties.

“But be­fore I was or­dained as a priest, Arch­bish­op Pan­tin asked three of us who were dea­cons to serve in a parish, New Grant. The priests there went on hol­i­days and we were on sem­i­nary va­ca­tion, so he asked us to have a lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence of what is parish life.”

He de­scribed his first few years as a priest as chal­leng­ing but en­joy­able.

“I was fresh, I was young, I was vi­sion­ary and en­thu­si­as­tic.”

Among his most mem­o­rable post­ings was work­ing along­side Bish­op Har­vey in the Laven­tille/Mor­vant parish in the 1980s.

“Two of us were asked to work to­geth­er in the whole area, so we had to share re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. No one was the parish priest or the as­sis­tant; we were co-pas­tors. That was very ex­cit­ing be­cause of the dy­namism of the parish.”

They formed a youth group called the Ko­keeoko Youth Move­ment, which at­tract­ed a lot of young peo­ple. He ex­plained the phi­los­o­phy be­hind the name.

“The African say­ing, to give some­one a ko­keeoko is to help some­one along; to give some­one space on your back and shoul­der to car­ry them. It is al­so the sound of the roost­er giv­ing the morn­ing cry, in­di­cat­ing that a new day is be­gin­ning; the dawn of our peo­ple ris­ing to a new dawn.”

They al­so in­tro­duced some­thing they called the Old and Young Fete to raise funds in the parish.

“And the parish­ioners, the old ones and the young ones, got to­geth­er and en­joyed the danc­ing,” he re­called with a chuck­le.

Over the years, the mon­sign­or has even found him­self do­ing quite a bit of man­u­al labour at parish­es that need­ed ren­o­vat­ing. This, he be­lieves, stemmed from his younger self’s as­pi­ra­tions of study­ing en­gi­neer­ing.

“So if I went to a parish, and the church need­ed to be up­grad­ed or the pres­bytery to be re­paired, I was in­volved with that. I en­joyed do­ing that.”

In the 60s, he re­called, his par­ents went to Eng­land to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­rolling him in a uni­ver­si­ty around the Chelsea area, so he could study en­gi­neer­ing and play foot­ball with Chelsea.

“Ever since I was a young man, I want­ed to do en­gi­neer­ing, and I de­cid­ed to make sure I get in­to a pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball pro­gramme,” foun­da­tions that were un­con­scious­ly laid from ear­ly child­hood.

Pereira was born in Gon­za­les, and his fam­i­ly moved to St Ann’s when he was three years old.

“As a child, I got a lot of Lego sets and toys that in­volved try­ing to build some­thing. And I al­so got foot­balls. We lived close enough to the sa­van­nah, so my fa­ther would fre­quent­ly take us there to play foot­ball.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, his fa­ther was a T&TEC em­ploy­ee and en­rolled him in the com­pa­ny’s en­gi­neer­ing class­es.

“So on Wednes­day evenings, af­ter school at St Mary’s Col­lege, I would go to T&TEC on Fla­ment Street to do some en­gi­neer­ing lessons.”

But his call­ing to min­istry took prece­dence, and half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, he has no re­grets be­cause it has been an en­joy­able and sat­is­fy­ing call­ing. And al­though he re­tired from ac­tive parish min­istry in 2023, he still as­sists with mass, most fre­quent­ly with his broth­er Ab­bot John Pereira.

“Re­tire­ment came pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of ill­ness. I do dial­y­sis three times a week, I have a lung prob­lem, I have a heart prob­lem. And the com­bi­na­tion of those three is­sues meant that I need­ed to be cau­tious in how much I can do and should do. So against my own in­ter­nal de­sire, I had to re­tire from parish life,” which al­lowed him the time to fo­cus on his well-be­ing, and to write a book, Take up Your Bed and Walk - My Min­istry and Mus­ings, which will soon be avail­able on Ama­zon. The in­come from the book will be di­vid­ed equal­ly be­tween the sem­i­nary and the cler­gy pool.

“I be­gan writ­ing, not sure what, and then it just emerged. It is about my 50 years in dif­fer­ent parish­es.”

He miss­es cel­e­brat­ing Mass and work­ing ac­tive­ly with the peo­ple.

“But I am con­scious that this is where I should be now,” tak­ing care of his health and en­joy­ing the World Cup match­es. His team of choice?

“I am old school. I like Brazil, with lean­ings to the Nether­lands.”