Church people and social workers in India are mourning the death of a Belgian Jesuit missioner, Fr Michael Anthony Windey, who used Gandhian methods to revolutionize village life in India. Fr Windey, founder of the Village Reconstruction Organization (VRO), died on Sept. 20 at Heverle in Belgium, where he had been undergoing treatment for liver cancer since January, UCA News reports. He was 88.
Sabien Arnaut, Fr Windey’s niece, told UCA News from Belgium that her uncle’s last wish was to return to India, but doctors ruled it out, saying he would not survive a flight back.
“He was very weak and could barely walk. Though the doctors gave him only a few weeks to live, his sudden death was unexpected,” she said. His funeral is scheduled for Sept. 26 in Belgium.
Fr Windey was born in 1921, the fourth of 12 children. He joined the Jesuits in 1938, traveled to India in 1946 and was ordained a priest in 1950. Until 1969 he worked in Ranchi, eastern India, where he began social work in 1967 when a famine hit Bihar state.
He shifted to the southern state of Andhra Pradesh in 1969 to work among cyclone victims and later set up VRO, following Mahatma Gandhi’s call to reconstruct village life as the way to bring about India’s advancement.
Fr Windey “believed in the Gandhian way of developing villages, and understood the Indian ethos and culture,” said Fr Anthoniraj Thumma, secretary of the ecumenical Andhra Pradesh Federation of Churches. “He was more Indian than Belgian, and we will miss him and his social service.”
According to Fr Peter Raj, a Jesuit from Andhra Pradesh and secretary to the Jesuit provincial of South Asia, Fr Windey succeeded in transforming village life.
“He made ordinary people self-reliant and dignified,” the priest told UCA News.
Fr Xavier Jeyaraj, secretary for the social department of the Jesuits’ South Asia region, noted that Father Windey developed contacts with people of all religions. “His simplicity, openness and friendly approach toward the poor was wonderful,” he said.
Nagender Swamy, a Hindu and secretary of the VRO governing body, eulogized the missioner as “a great proponent” of village development and renewal.
“His loss is difficult to replace, but his hard work has a tremendous future for village development,” he added.
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