Century-old shrines need to be preserved

Growing affluence, in part, fuelled by expats, and the urge for “modernizing in a hurry is eating away into the heritage of Christian religious monuments handed to Goa over the centuries.

Fighting a long and virtually lone battle to preserve historic monuments, which are over a century old, former Goa government senior official Percival Noronha of Panjim has been leveraging officials, church authorities and public opinion over many years to build up concern over the issue.

“It is unfortunate that in the seminaries today, history, heritage and moral values are not at all taught to those who aspire to become the future guardians of our churches,” complains Noronha, a former senior bureaucrat in the Goa government, whose tenure straddled both pre-and post-1961 regimes.

He disagrees with the view that crowded churches mean that the old must make way for the new. Demolishing historic monuments can hardly be justified, and other buildings could be set up without damaging the treasures in stone of the past, he suggests. Our additional service timings could be considered too.

In some places, says he, churches have been turned into “billboards”. Donors are perpetuated by having their names prominently displayed. “In some instances, the names of the saint to which the Church or chapel is dedicated,” he adds.

In the Provedoria home for the aged at Chimbel, the Church of Our Lady of Serra-now in Goa government hands- is suffering from neglect too. “The authorities went to the extend of destroying the old lateral left-wing attached to the church. As a result, the church got badly damaged and may crumble at any moment,” Noronha fears.

WORLD HERITAGE: Noronha points out that a seminar on the world heritage monuments of Old Goa put in lengthy recommendations way back in 1995. Till date little, if anything, has been done. On the contrary, the area has been allowed to become a concrete jungle at the behest of builders.

But it is only officials who face charges of neglect, or a lack of understanding of the heritage of the past. Religious authorities have themselves undertaken a number of building activities, some of which Noronha questions.

In 1996, the Church of Borim built in the 1860s was also demolished, said Noronha. “It is high time that a suitable piece of legislation is framed for safeguarding age-old monuments against demolition,” he told the Town Planning Department.

Noronha says one of Goa’s former CM, fortunately, could not put a “perverse dream into reality” of replacing the Varca Church’s zinc sheets with concrete parapets, during his short tenure in office.

“We have in Goa enough churches that have been terribly mauled by concrete appendices. (on the other hand) Panjim’s church present committee headed by Egypicio Rodrigues and Heriberto Mascarenhas devised a novel system of fixing pipes with fibre sheets which are retrieved in the fair season,” he points out.

Another village where the issue made it to local headlines was Loutolim. News reports said a century-old tree had been felled to make way for a concrete stage outside the village cemetery, with some parishioners questioning the wisdom of the move.

Questions have also been raised about the links between those pushing such projects-which sometimes allegedly involve persons holding religious posts, and relatives who are engineers or builders possibly having a vested interest in more building activity.

In sections of the local press, it is not unusual to find letters to the editor voice concern about particular priests going on a building spree, and causing “heritage destruction”.

Using strong language, Noronha said that the Maina-Curtorim shrine, built-in 1783 and’ full of historicity besides being a beautiful Renaissance-type sanctuary, was being “destroyed to enlarge the church.

At Fatorda, the only specimen of a Rococo façade chapel is “being allowed to die a natural death by not caring even to reset the tiles of the chapel”, says he.

Last December, news report caused some uncertainty about the St Andre Church of Vasco da Gama, whose roots go back to the year 1570.

Very few citizens might have noticed the generally-close chapel of Our Lady of Conception –the so-called Chapel of D Lourenco tucked away alongside the Hotel Mandovi in Panjim.

Last year, unseasonal early rains in May caught the Confraria unexpected, and a gaping spot where five tiles were removed from the roof saw the chapel flooded with water.