Fr Sirju: No schooling is child abuse

KEEPING a child out of school is a form of child-abuse, warned RC priest Fr Martin Sirju, in his homily at the Feast of the Holy Innocents yesterday at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Port of Spain.

He urged those present, including 30 children and their parents, to pray for children who are being abused physically, emotionally or sexually.

Sirju said Children’s Authority chairman Hanif Benjamin said 13,000 cases of child abuse were reported in 2017, so together with the three unreported cases for each reported case, there was a total of 50,000 cases that year.

“There are also children not going to school or not doing well.

“That is a form of abuse. When children are not properly educated, that is a very serious form of abuse.”

Sirju justified his continuing stand in not blessing toys at the service but rather the children themselves, who each received an anointing of oil of the forehead and prayers.

“The blessing of toys is superficial. If you have a relative or a friend with a sick child at hospital, today is a very good day to go to visit that child.

“You will receive many more blessings than if your toys are blessed.”

He recalled Jesus Christ once saluting the righteous by saying, “When I was sick, you visited me.”

Earlier, Sirju began his homily by saying Holy Innocents is about children, not their toys.

“If there were plenty toys here would it be quiet or would it be noisy? Noisy. And if it is noisy would you be able to hear me? No. So I prefer not to have the toys, but to bless and anoint you.”

He related the biblical story of how an angel had warned Jesus’ parents to flee to Egypt to escape King Herod’s murderousness, to return only after the king’s death. On this theme of family dislocation, he recalled seeing families sleeping on the streets of Mumbai, India, on a piece of cardboard covered by a thin sheet. “Today we remind God of the ways little children suffer. Can you tell me some ways?”

They replied: hunger, illness, lack of shelter and types of abuse.

Newsday later spoke to Angela Toussaint, wife of Deacon Lennox Toussaint, who wasthere with her granddaughter Maya Elbourne, an altar server. Toussaint reckoned some parishioners had taken their children elsewhere for their toys to be blessed, so reducing the attendance at the cathedral.

In 2016 Sirju was stoutly defended for his “no toys” stance by the tformer archbishop Joseph Harris, who said he himself disallowed toys as being irreverent and a cause of noise from children squabbling over them. In a blog entry last year, Sirju said the toys distract even parents and lead to competitive talk about whose toy is better than whose.

Sirju later spoke to Newsday about a lack of schooling as a form of child abuse.

“People often say you can’t blame one person. You need to address it on several fronts – the Ministry of Education, religious organisations, the classroom, the parent. My former teacher Fr Charles, an island schol winner from St Mary’s College, said that growing up, his parents said there was often a need to choose between food and education, and they chose education.

“Now we choose things and everything else, but education has a low priority. We need to get back to that era when education across the board, including the poorer sectors of society, was something to be proud of and essential to human development.”