By Rita McInerney

They are welcome guests in the scenic mountains of North Georgia, a location as far removed in mood from their homeplaces in southern India as it is in miles. Devaraj, Selvaraj and Raja, first members of the Little Way Missioners of the Diocese of Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, are experiencing the Glenmary spirit so they can serve their brothers and sisters in the rural Church at home.

A Propagation of the Faith director in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the catalyst for the covenant that brought the first three members of the Indian order to St. Francis of Assisi parish in Blairsville.

Since early in the 1970s, Bishop Joseph Rajappa of Kurnool had the dream of establishing an order of priests and brothers who would serve and identify with the people in the rural areas of his diocese. Attempts to start such a congregation failed because a formation program for the few candidates was lacking.

While making a mission appeal in Cincinnati in 1982, he spoke of his dream to the Propagation of the Faith priest who knew just where to take the bishop, to the Glenmarys, where Father Bob Berson listened.

“When that diocese director of the Propagation of the Faith drove him up the hill (to Glenmary headquarters) it really was God saying ‘I’ll show you how to do it,’” said Father Bob Poandl, Glenmary pastor of St. Francis and St. Paul’s in Cleveland, Ga.

Father Berson accepted Bishop Rajappa’s invitation and traveled to India in 1983, visiting around the Kurnool diocese. He agreed that the bishop’s dream was practical and essentially that of the Glenmary mission. That same year the Glenmarys mandated a five-year covenant of prayer, support and cooperation with the Little Way Missioners. “Glenmary is just kind of angeling them,” Father Poandl explained.

Quiet-spoken Sauda Raja Reddy, 33, is superior of the small congregation of three undergoing formation in Georgia. “Brother Raja” began seminary studies to become a brother in 1969 and continued until 1974 when he returned home to Pedra Kottala and worked his trade, as an electrician. Then in 1976 he entered the Little Way Brotherhood, in Kurnool. At that time there were two other candidates. In 1979, the bishop asked him to work in an orphanage sheltering 240 children. The two other candidates remained in the brotherhood for a year and then left because of lack of direction.

“Since then I am alone,” Raja said. “Then in 1982 our bishop called me and told me he wanted to change it to Little Way Missioners so we could have priests. He invited the other two (Devaraj and Selvaraj) and they accepted.”

The two younger men, Arulappa Devaraj, 26, and Selvaraj Balappa, 24, are studying for the priesthood. Both are from villages in Bangalore. Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan will ordain them as deacons on Nov. 16 at St. Francis. All three men will make their first profession on March 1 in Cincinnati and leave for India the next day. A fourth member of Little Way Missioners, an ordained priest, and Bishop Rajappa will be glad to welcome them home.

They arrived in Atlanta on Aug. 6 and spent several weeks at the Glenmary Research Center where they studied the history of church missions. They will return to Atlanta from the mountains Dec. 1 and continue to study until Feb. 1.

In Blairsville, nestled among the brilliant peaks of the Appalachians, they are immersed in their novitiate. On Sunday and all through the week they encounter parishioners and other local folk in the pews, at the post office, in the barbershop. They share meals with hospitable parishioners, visit the lonely and the sick and chop wood for someone unable to do it.

Their formation in Blairsville is a rehearsal for the role they have chosen and they have been cast among willing prompters. “The parish is really into the formation,” Father Poandl said. “It’s exciting to me, they are so insightful, very receptive.” Parishioners help their pastor in observing the young men’s responses and interactions in the new situations they meet.

Most important to Father Poandl is helping the three grow together into real community, always a priority in the growth period of formation.

Because women in India are still treated as second rate, the Glenmary priest is eager to have the three work with the Sisters of St. Francis who serve in Blairsville and Cleveland. Women, the young Indians said, have no role in the lay ministries such as Catholic women here perform. Occasionally college girls and nuns will be lectors, but older women, accepting of their status, do not seek to participate.

Their own families have been Catholic well over a hundred years. The number of Catholics in the diocese is 49,564, according to the diocese directory which travels with Brother Raja. Kurnool is one of 10 dioceses in Pradesh where Catholics make up less than one percent of the population.

Rosary services are held in the churches every evening followed by Benediction on Friday and Saturday. Confession is still made the pre-Vatican II way and everyone goes regularly. It is compulsory for children to go every Friday.

Men serve as lectors but “only priests, deacons and professed acolytes can distribute Communion.” Nowhere in India, the men stressed, do communicants receive the Host in the hand. And the closest they come to receiving under the two species is on feast days when the priest dips the host into the wine in the chalice.

They are faithful to their devotional practices. “They have more piety,” said Father Poandl. Each day they spend an hour in church before the Blessed Sacrament praying and chanting while kneeling and sitting cross-legged on the floor. Before entering the church they remove their shoes.

The Indian seminarians are full of information about life in India and share easily with visitors curious about the church in their vast country. Catholic schools, because they receive grants from the government, are forbidden to have religious education as part of the daily schoolwork. Religious education classes for the school children are held every day after school and on Sunday.

There is a college for men and one for women in their diocese. There are eight high schools, separate facilities for boys and girls. Boys and girls attend primary school together. Three languages are compulsory, the state language, English, and Hindi, the national language.

Steve Verfaille, a candidate to become a Glenmary brother assigned to the mountain parish for a year, takes them around St. Francis and St. Paul’s in Cleveland. They have talked about their life to teen groups and CCD classes and have visited shut-ins.

Eating meals with parishioners is very much a part of Glenmary parish life and “in this parish they look upon us as family members. As seminarians, we were part and parcel of the people. And as priests we want to be part of the people,” Devaraj, most outgoing of the three, said.

Selvaraj, most vocal of the three, finds the people “very good and friendly. They try to make me comfortable.” But the food is too bland. The meal Raja prepared for a guest from Atlanta was more to his liking. Steve, Father Poandl and the guest savored the spicy ground beef, brinjal (eggplant) curry, rice and chaputtis (in Blairsville tortillas are substituted) as much as the Little Way seminarians.

As religious back home they will often have to cook for themselves and each of them can do it. But when they go home their mothers or sisters prepare the meals. It is not a man’s place, the kitchen.

There is still much for them to experience. Shortly, the novices will join Father Berson for a retreat in the monastery at Conyers. After finishing their studies in Atlanta Feb. 1, they will spend two weeks at a Glenmary parish in Jefferson, N.C. and several days with Glenmary seminarians in Washington, D.C.

For now they are very much at home in Blairsville. To their “novice master,” Father Poandl, “their presence is a blessing.”