Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Ro­man Catholic Vic­ar Gen­er­al, Fa­ther Mar­tin Sir­ju, has warned that the on­go­ing threat of con­flict in the re­gion will di­rect­ly im­pact Trinidad and To­ba­go, and cit­i­zens must help each oth­er and not be­come self­ish.

He made the call as he de­liv­ered his homi­ly at Christ­mas morn­ing Mass at the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion yes­ter­day in down­town Port-of-Spain.

Sir­ju point­ed to the glob­al con­flicts mak­ing head­lines, in­clud­ing the war in Ukraine, the on­go­ing de­vel­op­ments in Gaza, and the war in Su­dan.

He al­so zoned in on height­ened ten­sions in this re­gion, with Venezuela cur­rent­ly sur­round­ed by an ar­ma­da be­long­ing to the Unit­ed States.

Sir­ju said, “I don’t know if we have any Hin­dus here this morn­ing, but many Hin­dus say that we live in Kali Yu­ga, which means we live in dark times. When we look around, we see signs of that dark and dif­fi­cult times in which we live.”

He went fur­ther in say­ing, “Our econ­o­mists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies have al­so told us that 2026 is go­ing to be a rough year, and we ought not to keep draw­ing on the Her­itage Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. Some peo­ple fear that if our geopol­i­tics goes south, Venezuela might bomb Trinidad, and so we have this spec­tre. We have this dark­ness that is over us.”

How­ev­er, Sir­ju said this is not a time to be­come de­spon­dent, though some may feel the need to pan­ic.

“It is not a cause for de­spair be­cause Scrip­ture tells us a light shines in the dark, and the dark­ness did not over­come. And so, when we look at the Cae­sar Au­gus­tus­es of this world and their mighty pow­er, yes, dark­ness will come, but the dark­ness will not over­pow­er.”

He called on those in the con­gre­ga­tion to draw on their faith dur­ing chal­leng­ing times, adding that cit­i­zens must take care of each oth­er in dif­fi­cult times.

Sir­ju, how­ev­er, al­so slammed those who rush to gro­ceries to buy in bulk in times of cri­sis.

He said, “When we see dif­fi­cult times com­ing, peo­ple rush to PriceS­mart, they rush to Hi-Lo, and they buy things in bulk. These are peo­ple who can af­ford it. If you rush and buy things in bulk, what are you go­ing to leave for the poor­er peo­ple? This is against how Je­sus lived. Je­sus was al­so very mind­ful of the poor, so hoard­ing might be a prag­mat­ic men­tal­i­ty, but it is not a Chris­t­ian men­tal­i­ty. We are not sup­posed to hoard. One of the things they hoard the most is toi­let pa­per, as if that is so im­por­tant.”

He added, “Hoard­ing does not help us. Hoard­ing tes­ti­fies to a self­ish so­ci­ety that does not want to take care of one an­oth­er. An­oth­er thing we can do to fight the dark­ness that is com­ing in 2026 is that we have to learn to share. We must have the habit of shar­ing, and so those who have not must give to those who do not have. Ac­cord­ing to the Bible, those who have are ob­lig­at­ed to give to those who do not have. That is a bib­li­cal teach­ing. It is not on­ly char­i­ty, it is al­so jus­tice.”

Sir­ju al­so asked the faith­ful to be more mind­ful of the words they speak in 2026, urg­ing cit­i­zens to speak more pos­i­tive­ly.

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don al­so ac­knowl­edged this has been a “dif­fer­ent” year for T&T.

In his homi­ly on the night of Christ­mas Eve, he said at the same church, “This year in T&T is dif­fer­ent from any oth­er year I know, and the Christ­mas is dif­fer­ent from any of the Christ­mas I know. So many of our broth­ers and sis­ters, and so many of our cit­i­zens of this beloved coun­try, en­ter in­to Christ­mas with very lit­tle or noth­ing at all, and they un­der­stand what Joseph ex­pe­ri­enced. They un­der­stand what it is like to en­ter in­to this time, hav­ing to make prepa­ra­tions, and the cash just lit­tle bit short.”

Gor­don said many cit­i­zens have been feel­ing the brunt of the eco­nom­ic hard­ship in this coun­try.

He added, “Christ­mas is al­ways in Trinidad such a time of great joy and fes­tiv­i­ty—the lights, the trees, the dec­o­ra­tions, the ponche de creme, the ham, the sor­rel, the turkey, the pastelle, the black cake—by the time you are done with Christ­mas things, you have a feast for kings, and this year many fam­i­lies will not ex­pe­ri­ence that, but this is in­vi­ta­tion from the Lord to us this Christ­mas time be­cause one of the things we have not pon­dered deeply on for many years is the fact that Je­sus was born as a poor child to a poor fam­i­ly.”

He said peo­ple must learn to grasp “the scan­dal of Christ­mas as they grasp the scan­dal of the cross.”