Students and teachers from a Belgian minor seminary which trained the first missionary to India’s tribal people, Father Constant Lievens, are retracing the steps of the Flemish pioneer. However, the seminary in Roeselare, Belgium now has only one priest and no longer teaches theology, the Times of India reports.
These revelations were made by a group of 22 students and three teachers from the same school, which arrived in India Sunday in an effort to study the life, work and contributions of Lievens in India.
“This is the third group of young students who volunteered to come to India and see how the Jesuit devoted his life to the cause of poor people in a distant country,” group leader Filip Vandevelde told the Times.
Now Belgium is looking to India for priests to spread the good news of Jesus in their country, he added.
The team that arrived through the same route that Lievens once followed in 1885, when he came to Chotanagpur as a missionary after a brief stay in Kolkata, has decided to visit different villages of Jharkhand in the next 12 days wherever Lievens worked.
“We know that he stayed in Chotanagpur for seven years and purchased one horse every year. He formed a group of eminent lawyers and fought for the land rights of tribals who were being deprived of their rights by the then landlords,” Vandevelde said.
Jesuit missionary in India, Aurel Brys, explained that the idea is cultural exchange between the two countries.
“Recently, a batch of students from St Xavier’s school went on a fortnight-long visit to Belgium and we welcomed students from there to visit India,” he said.
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