Sri Lankan priest up to the challenge
People
Fr Vincent Wijesuriya is no stranger to challenges – whether it’s serving migrant workers across the Arabian Gulf or facing near empty congregations because of rampaging elephants in central Sri Lanka.
The affable priest’s latest challenge as the new chaplain to Adelaide’s Sri Lankan community and assistant priest to the Cathedral parish might just be the weather.
Arriving during one of the State’s coldest weeks, Fr Vincent, 58, admitted it was a big change from his parish in Sigiriya where he has spent the past seven years.
Not only is Sigiriya a world heritage site with its ancient rock fortress dubbed the eighth wonder of the world, the region has temperatures that rarely drop below 30 degrees.
Part of the Diocese of Kandy, his parish comprises about 210 families who worship at three churches.
“My area is known for its elephants,” Fr Vincent told The Southern Cross.
“I had a big challenge because sometimes people don’t come for Mass, at six o’clock the morning they come with lanterns sometimes because it’s dark…if they find there is a herd of elephants they just go back so they don’t get attacked by elephants. Also six o’clock in the evening (dusk) they (the parishioners) don’t come.”
Fr Vincent said the elephants were looking for food and could do massive damage to crops and rice paddies.
“When it is harvesting time, people generally don’t sleep,” he said.
“They make temporary shelters on the top of trees, and they keep singing without falling asleep so when an elephant comes they can inform the others.
“Sometimes the elephants come to the village; by nature they are not disturbing people but when the river runs dry they come in search of water, they go to the back of the house and break into the kitchen to take the people’s salt, they can sense it’s there.”
Fr Vincent said in his community alone, 10 people had been killed by elephants.
“They are very friendly animals but we are living in their habitats because the population in Sri Lanka is growing and we are building our cities into the elephant habitat…that’s where the problem is.”
While the elephants are protected, Fr Vincent said “we are given guns to scare them”.
“It’s not just elephants, during the day it is the monkeys and peacocks, and wild boars are another problem but people generally hunt them,” he added.
Fr Vincent was born in the north-west of the country, about one and a half hours from the capital, Colombo.
The second youngest of 10 children and the son of a teacher, his younger brother joined the Marists and his sister’s daughter is a Good Shepherd nun.
Christianity was brought to the predominantly Buddhist and Hindu country by the Portuguese in 1505 and almost 10 per cent of population is Catholic. About the same per centage is Muslim.
Fr Vincent attended a Buddhist school but was deeply impressed by the priests he met through his parish and when he was 17 he decided to join the seminary.
“The first thing that came to me was the priesthood,” he said.
After 10 years in the seminary he was ordained on December 21, 1993, for the Diocese of Kandy.
The ordination took place in his own parish, Pannala, three hours’ drive from Kandy, because his father wasn’t well at the time.
“The whole village celebrated, it was very big,” he said, adding his parents and one sibling have died since his ordination.
He was an assistant parish priest in several places, then a parish priest before the bishop asked him to go to Dubai.
The mission involved alternating between Dubai, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.
Most of the Sri Lankan Catholics worked as domestic house maids and came to worship in Singhalese or Tamil. There were also construction workers but he said they generally went to English services.
After five years in the Gulf region his bishop called him back to Sri Lanka but after a few months he was recalled by the bishop of Dubai/Abu Dhabi.
At the end of 2017 he returned to Sri Lanka and took up the role of parish priest at Sigiriya.
He visited Adelaide in 2023 for two weeks to “see if I liked it”.
Fr Vincent said about 250 Sri Lankans had attended his first Mass at St Peter Claver Church, Dulwich.
Previously served by a Sri Lankan chaplain from Sydney, the community has warmly welcomed Fr Vincent’s arrival, describing it on Facebook as “a remarkable moment in the short but significant history of our community”.
Fr Vincent said most of the Sri Lankans living in Adelaide were highly qualified professionals and although they spoke fluent English, it was important for them to worship in their native tongue.
“They like to pray in their own language,” he said. “Your feelings generally are expressed in your mother tongue, Singhalese or Tamil. It’s also important for their children to hear their language, otherwise they will be strangers when they go back to Sri Lanka because grandparents don’t speak English.”
The community celebrated his arrival with a traditional meal in the parish hall. But Fr Vincent insisted he would not be eating only Sri Lankan food.
“As they say, ‘once you are in Rome, be a Roman’,” he laughed.
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