Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Mara­cas, St Joseph, showed their ap­pre­ci­a­tion for key fig­ures in their com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing a spe­cial Mass at St Michael’s RC Church, Llu­en­go, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The ser­vice, cen­tred on com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing, recog­nised in­di­vid­u­als who dis­tin­guished them­selves through acts of ser­vice.

Dur­ing his ser­mon, of­fi­ci­at­ing priest Fr Mikhail Woodruffe thanked the ho­n­ourees for their con­tri­bu­tions and self­less­ness in serv­ing the pub­lic.

Woodruffe de­scribed the oc­ca­sion as “bit­ter­sweet,” as it al­so served as a col­lec­tive farewell to Sgt Sean Be­dase, who was re­cent­ly trans­ferred from the Mara­cas, St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion to the North-Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force in Arou­ca.

He said Be­dase was not on­ly in­stru­men­tal in im­prov­ing com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty, but al­so in fos­ter­ing clos­er re­la­tion­ships with res­i­dents.

“Sgt Be­dase came to this com­mu­ni­ty as a stranger and quick­ly made him­self at home.

“I re­call one day we wrote a let­ter seek­ing per­mis­sion to host our har­vest. I told him I would have some­one drop it off at the sta­tion, but he said, ‘No, I’ll come.’ He walked from the po­lice sta­tion to the church, then down to the health cen­tre to view the grounds.

“It’s the lit­tle things like that. We re­al­ly want to thank him for em­body­ing the spir­it of pro­tect­ing and serv­ing—some­one who is present and un­der­stands the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Woodruffe al­so en­cour­aged parish­ioners to pray for Be­dase, not­ing the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with his new as­sign­ment.

Dur­ing the ser­vice, W/Sgt An­toine of the Mara­cas, St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion was pre­sent­ed with a plaque in ap­pre­ci­a­tion of her ser­vice, as Woodruffe com­mend­ed her and oth­er of­fi­cers for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism and high stan­dards.

“We are blessed that our po­lice re­sponse time is less than two min­utes,” he said.

Al­so ho­n­oured was head nurse Sparkle Stafford of the neigh­bour­hood health cen­tre, whom Woodruffe de­scribed as a self­less med­ical pro­fes­sion­al who has been in­te­gral in co­or­di­nat­ing se­nior cit­i­zens’ health sem­i­nars.

Prin­ci­pal of the Mara­cas St Joseph RC School, Denise Gor­don, was al­so recog­nised. Woodruffe cred­it­ed her with lead­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic and holis­tic turn­around in the school’s na­tion­al stand­ing in re­cent times.

He said Gor­don not on­ly en­sured that stu­dents main­tained strong aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards, but al­so played a key role in pre­serv­ing the in­sti­tu­tion’s tra­di­tions through Catholic ed­u­ca­tion.