Diocese: Gulbarga

Pioneers: Sisters Helen Dantis, Irene Albuquerque, Trecilla Dias, Catherine Sunitha Vas and 23 Pre-Novices

Bijapur is a geographically land-locked district. It is bounded by Sholapur on the north, Sangli on the north-west (parts of the state of Maharastra), Belgaum on the west, Bagalkot on the south, Gulbarga on the east and by Raichur on the south- east. Thus, it is a land-locked district on the northern boundary of Karnataka. The district is known for its religious, cultural, historic, and even civic heritage. The historic merit of Bijapur sets it apart from other districts in North Karnataka. The world famous Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur is located just fifty feet north of Sneha Sangama Convent. However, the socio-economic condition of the district as a whole is deplorable. The condition is similar to that of Bidar and Haveri, which has been illustrated elsewhere. Bijapur consists of 78 villages and Bijapur city alone consists of more than one hundred slums. The caste system is rampant in the area; in addition, unemployment, illiteracy, child labour, bonded labour, broken families, drunkenness, morbid attachment to superstitions and corruptions are widespread. The Ursuline Franciscan Sisters arrived at Bijapur on June 3, 1998. A brief illustration of the scenario that dictated their advent to Bijapur is in place.

In early 1990s, the Ursuline Franciscan Congregation was making a conscious choice to move to the margins to be with those who are on the margins. In achieving this objective, Sr Edilburga Monteiro, Superior General and her team3 had made available to the whole Congregation an opportunity to attend a week-long seminar on social analysis, conducted by Fr John Desrochers CSC, a well-known social analyst. The proposal was further disseminated in the Superiors’ Meeting of 1997 using expertise of Mr Desmond and Ms Margaret Abreo, Fr Francis Guntipalli SJ and several other socially enlightened people. In view of intensifying the reality of making a conscious choice for those on the margins, Fr Claude D’Souza SJ was invited to guide the Chapter delegates through a retreat which was held as a proximate preparation for the Tenth General Chapter in 1998. Having resided at Bijapur for a few years already, Fr Claude D’Souza literally harped on the concern of making a preferential option for the poor. Subsequently in the General Chapter, along with a proposal to initiate social action in all the four Provinces of the Congregation, it was unanimously decided that the Pre- novices of the Congregation would spend a large part of their formation year in the slums of Bijapur, which was called contextual formation.

Accordingly in May 1998 Sr Edilburga Monteiro, Superior General, Sr Angeline Sequeira, Councillor General, and Sr Helen Dantis, Directress of pre-novices, arrived at Maitri Sadan, Bijapur, residence of the Jesuits. They spent two days in listening, discussing, visiting slums, and above all discerning in prayer regarding the course of action to be initiated shortly. Subsequently  on June 3, 1998 Sr Helen Dantis along with 21 student candidates moved to Bijapur. Sr Victoria Serrao, Assistant Superior General accompanied them. She stayed with them for a month – visiting slums and accommodating herself to each and every inconvenience of a congested rented house, without interfering in the programme of formation while taking stalk of everything as gently as possible. Her presence had been a blessing in the house. They settled in a rented house belonging to Mr Mohammad Gaus Tavildar, situated twenty metres north of the Sneha Sangama Convent on the way to Gol Gumbaz. The family was extremely good even to the extent of moving to a rented house in order to provide the Sisters with the needed space. The Jesuits, Fr Claude D’Souza and Fr Paulose Vellacada in particular had been instrumental in making the initial arrangements for residence as well as apostolate in the slums. On June 4, 1998, the student candidates were initiated to the pre-novitiate by Sr Victoria and the apostolate was begun on the same day. They visited the slums individually for half a day while the remaining half day was allotted for classes, reflection, and other daily chores. They managed by themselves every activity of the house –   marketing, cooking, accounting, and fetching firewood from a depot located two kilometres away from their residence. At the end of the year, during March and April when the pre- novices had returned to the Holy Rosary Convent at Jeppu the house was occupied by the novices of Mangalore and Mysore Province for a month each in view of acquiring contextual formation.

Encountering the abject reality of Bijapur and incorporating it into one’s prayer, study, reflection, and way of life was found fruitful; hence, in view of continuing the venture, a 0.75-acre land was purchased in the present location of the convent in 1999 even as the second year continued in the rented house. Sr 

Angeline Sequeira was involved in the transaction with the assistance of Fr Paulose SJ. She put up a modest house with asbestos-sheeted roof in the plot within three months with assistance from labourers from Mangalore headed by her brother Joachim Sequeira. The house was inaugurated on June 1, 2000; it was canonically erected and a community was formed consisting of Sisters Helen Dantis, Irene Albuquerque, Trecilla Dias and Catherine Sunitha Vas.

With additional members, the community ventured into additional need-based and humanitarian activities. A group of seven girls from villages were accommodated at Sneha Sangama and they were coached in view of their being prepared for SSLC exams. It was an attempt like Grihini. Sr Trecilla Dias managed the scheme for a year. As a corresponding initiative, in 2001, the Sisters collaborated with the Jesuits in catering to a group of sixty girl child labourers; it has been a project of the government in view of uplifting girl children who were generally divested of their right to education by occupying them in household chores. The work has been too intricate necessitating a monthly recording of even the amount of spices used for each child. Besides, the office of child labour demanded several details regarding several aspects of the group of sixty children. In fact, the Sisters of Mysore Province – Winnifred Lobo, Susheela F, and Deepti CK have been assisting in educating the boy child labourers since 1997 onwards by residing at Maitri Sadan. Sisters Susheela F and Deepti CK were accommodated by the Sisters in the rented house from 1998 onwards. The children were housed in a four room school building constructed in 2001 with assistance from a French group of students headed by Fr Patrick Langue through the mediation of Fr Claude SJ. The  good work of catering to girl child labourers was continued in the following year with assistance from the Padre Pio Association at Florence, 

Italy. This is because the government project was reallocated. The Sisters followed a different strategy in obtaining girls for the programme. Instead of accommodating children who arrive seeking education, they visited rural and interior villages; they resided with them overnight and brought the most deserving. In many cases, they had to literally plead and even lie stating that they would take them for a day’s picnic to the Gol Gumbaz. This is because most of the girls were earning members of the family at the age twelve onwards. As the saying goes, risks are repaid with risks, the Sisters, at their return with fourteen child labour girls, had to face the wrath of a group of Hindu fanatics who forced driving the KSRTC bus to the Sindagi police station. Nonetheless, there was sufficient grace and help to address the situation. Sr Catherine along with two lay local teachers shouldered the responsibility of teaching the 61 child labour girls.

Simultaneously in 2001 Sr Irene Albuquerque started training girls from the slums in tailoring, embroidery and craft work. As many as forty students regularly attended the class. She occupied one of the classrooms in the new building. The Generalate was supporting wholeheartedly all the initiatives taken at Bijapur. Besides the day scholars, there were twelve resident girls from villages to learn tailoring. Tailoring school day was celebrated annually. The occasion was used to conscientize the students on concerns like personality development, women’s rights and duties etc; experts in these areas were the resource persons.

In 1999 itself they were involved in prison ministry. Their service, limited to visiting the convicts weekly, listening to them, counselling them, and even praying with them, was enhanced after formation of the community and with the arrival of Sr Irene to Bijapur in particular in 2000. Sr Irene started training the women convicts in tailoring, embroidery, and craft. Sneha  Sangama has undertaken heroic deeds in the service of prisoners, like distributing fruits to women convicts purchased with savings from fasting on Fridays, donating blood to a male convict in his grave illness, visiting convicts at their house in remote areas when they were released at the sunset of their life due to illness, and working to secure bail to an orphan girl who was jailed for theft. Cultural programmes communicating consolation and hope in their despair have been performed as well at the jail. The ministry has been continuing; Sr Veronica VS and Jenny D’Sa have been taking up the charge.

The Sisters at Sneha Sangama were involved in another daring enterprise, namely, working with women involved in flesh trade. They visited them, guided them, and attended their meetings and seminars. It was found to be a challenging and rewarding mission. A significant achievement of the Sisters has been initiating seven girl child labourers after completion of their one year study in the child labour school, into SSLC open school scheme. In the case of those aged between thirteen and fifteen, and equipped with no more than reading and writing, coaching them with class X syllabus was desperately arduous. Sisters Catherine Sunitha Vas, Milagrin Horta and Helen Dantis have undertaken the responsibility with great care and love. The girls could appear for two subjects at a time failing most of the time. It has been a matter of great pride that three of them were able to complete their class X after three years. Furthermore, Sneha Sangama has conducted a survey of the physically handicapped residing in the slums of Bijapur; the object of the survey was to make them fit to avail themselves of the benefits of the government.

In 2002 Sneha Sangama formal school consisting of a nursery class and classes I and II was started. Catering to children exclusively from the surrounding slums of Bijapur had been its objective. Sr Winnifred Lobo and Leena Mathias who were community members in 2002, contributed a great deal in the initial stage of the school. The school building was a generous gift by a group of university students studying in France (majority of them were of French nationality), under the guidance of Jesuit priests; their help was obtained through Fr Claude D’Souza SJ, Mission Superior of the Bijapur Mission. Three different groups consisting of 10-15 members arrived at three different times (2001, 2004 and 2009) to Sneha Sangama and helped in putting up a three-storied school building. Each group put in twenty days manual labour in the construction of the building; as part of their project they supported the construction financially too. It goes without saying that the community Sisters as well as the Congregation are indebted to them; besides, their inspirational value system and way of living was food for thought to the pre-novices. Their association continued to finance partly the payment of the school staff. In 2007, the medium of instruction in the higher primary school was changed into English language from Kannada. In  2009, high school education was initiated at Sneha Sangama School. On June 25, 2010 the high school block as well as a computer room for the school was inaugurated. The school reached up to Class X. Students were found performing well in both curricular and co-curricular activities.

It must be noted that the work of the pre-novices in the slums undertaken in view of acquiring a contextual formation was challenging. Already their routine was highly demanding: activities in the slums, such as imparting literacy to women and young girls and children who had been deprived of it, coaching the school-going children from slums, teaching at child labour schools both at Maitri Sadan and Sneha Sangama, listening to women suffering domestic violence etc. In addition they would venture into exceptional heroic deeds, including nursing and caring on a daily basis an old woman who had contracted leprosy, a sick-single-destitute widow, a young man who was thrown out of his house due to his rotten leg, an HIV infected man, a woman with burns, a battered teenager forcefully married to a boy with vicious conduct. They fasted on Fridays

and skipped fruits at one meal in order to help the neediest. Needs of people were brought into their prayer and to the Eucharistic celebration as well. There were painful moments in the process of fulfilling their mission: three of them were taken to the police station on charges of conversion; one was chased out of a slum with a warning that she would be married to a boy from the slum if she dared to return to the slum; two of them were ordered not to enter a particular slum in which they had been serving... The pre-novices sailed through such unpleasant events. By and large their experience proved fruitful and of an enduring value.

When the number of pre-novices was more than twenty- five they were divided into two groups providing them with the experience of five months each at Bijapur. Both the batches were brought together at Holy Rosary for a month during which they were, through experts, taught skills in dance, music notation, street theatre etc. The History of the Congregation and sessions on religious life were imparted to them from Sisters of the Congregation. The group had been apart by itself cooking their food and managing their activities while assisting the community in whatever way feasible to them. Animators of Holy Rosary, Sisters Clara Furtado, Hilda Albuquerque and Rita Vas wholeheartedly supported the venture. One cannot but acknowledge gratefully the interest the Congregation has shown in this affair, expensive financially and other ways.

In 2004 at the transfer of Sr Helen Dantis, Sr Lucy D’Souza was appointed directress to the Pre-Novitiate and animator of Sneha Sangama. Sr Lucy D’Souza of Kallianpur was placed in charge of the Sneha Sangama School in the same year. The pre- novitiate programme was shifted back to the Holy Rosary Convent at Jeppu in 2007 and the Generalate handed over the Bijapur Mission to the Mangalore Province on August 28, 2009. Gradually the School overcoming its conversion tag, securing a record figure of 600 and attaining the title of one of the best schools in Bijapur has taken the centre stage. In the words of the Sisters at Bijapur, “definite progress has been certainly achieved in the field of formal education; however, the education apostolate has turned to be the sole apostolate of the institution. The social apostolate has faced a severe setback in the long run”. They also contend that the rich legacy of Sneha Sangama, which is a matter of pride and source of inspiration, ought to call for greater introspection along with need-based and timely action in reaching out to thousands of underprivileged in the region.

The Sisters have been extending their help in the pastoral activities of St Ann parish at Bijapur. Catechizing, sacristy work, joining in SCC prayer meetings, preparing and conducting liturgy at solemn feasts, accompanying the bereaved families in their sorrow, stitching dress for altar servers, and visiting families have been their regular activities. The Jesuits have supported the venture at Bijapur a great deal: Fr Claude was a spiritual challenge; Fr Paulose was present in times of tensions in the slum, Fr Arockia has given sessions to pre-novices on electricity; he has also guarded the house along with his boys of Loyola Technical Centre for three days when Sneha Sangama was undergoing the dread of robbers. Sisters Gretta Sanjeevini D’Souza and Benedicata Tellis have familiarized themselves with the crude reality of life at Bijapur for a month each in 2001 by being at Bijapur prior to their taking charge as novice directresses at North-East Province and North Province respectively.