Golden Birthday of Fr Mathew Vas

Fr Mathew Vas, parish priest of Mother of Sorrow Church for the past seven years, is a person who is compassionate and accepting to all, today we can see lots of developments in this area under his leadership. Being a down to earth person he mingles with each and everyone. St mary’s English School is the latest addition of achievements of Fr Vas which inaugurated on June 26, 2010.

When Mangaloremithr.com went to greet Fr Vas on the occasion of his 5oth Birthday celebrations, gathered some information while speaking to him.

Fr Mathew Vas was a third one in five children of Mr John and Mrs Lucy Vas of Siddakatte Parish, he was born on July 7, 1960. As both of his parents are teaches they have given good quality education to their all children. Fr Vas completes his primary education in Siddakatte itself, completes his P U C in Jain College, Moodbidri. In 1978 he joined St Josephs Seminary, Mangalore and ordained as priest on 30th April 1987 at Milagres Church, Mangalore.

Fr Vas completes 2 years in Kinnigoli later in Kulshekar parish as assistant parish priest, by recognition to his talents his seniors appointed him as Director for Diocesan Communication Centre, while he was in the office he directed kannada language biblical movie “Bhuvana Jyothi”.

He was returning from Manipal after all preparations for the first show of the movie, the Jeep he was travelling met an accident and he injured fatally in that accident, at one point doctors give up the hope of his life but miraculously he survived and later he continued his mission in communication centre.

Success of the movie encouraged him to conduct awareness programme on media education to high school students. After successful seven years of service he has been assigned to Bela Church as parish priest “economically poor people but rich in faith” says Fr Vas about Bela parishioners. He built a new church, priest home and bell tower with the help of Bela parishioners. People of Bela still praise him for his service to the community.

The next stop is Udupi Church, In Udupi he has given more attention to the spiritual needs of the people. With the help of all good hearted people, he did lot of good work there, he is working day and night to serve people. He has a desire to build a new school building for English medium school with a wide space so he bought 10 acres of land for this purpose far away from present school, starts working on the project and completed in time and on the occasion of silver jubilee celebration of English Medium School the new school building was inaugurated on June 26 with all fanfare, but he gives full credit to the people who supported him in all possible ways to complete his work.

“God has chosen me to serve people and he protected me for the past 50 years, I have to serve people it is Gods wish I have chosen for it. It is a special pleasure to work with the people of all faiths, when we are helpful to each other then we will not have any problems” he says

“We should be like youth when dealing with youths” says Fr Vas, he is a director of several youth organizations, attends all youth meetings, understands youth well and knows that youth has to play a major role in over all development of the parish.

“Life is a gift of God, one may live for fifty years or hundred years how you lived in this world is more important than how many years you lived” says Fr Vas.

Mangaloremithr.com congratulates Fr Vas on the occasion of his golden Birthday and wish him to be always healthy, good, joyful and unique,forever cherished and loved forever!