Father J. Appelman, MHM, Re Goan article. (Letters to the Editor).

I just received a January/February copy of Catholic Insight and read the article on page 18 about the Goan community in Southern Ontario. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. And I'd like to make a kind of addition. I am a Mill Hill Father from Holland, and as a missionary, I spent ten years in Uganda, the last five years as pastor of the city parish of Christ the King in Kampala. I wrote a short history of the parish while I was there. In short, the parish was founded in 1925 and was served by a Mill Hill Father coming from our main Mission at Nambia. It was always called the Goan Parish, because the church and the attached house were built by the Goan community of Kampala.

Families from Goa had been coming to East Africa from around the year 1900, originally as the interior was explored and railways were built from Mombasa in Kenya up to Kampala. Goan families settled in all the little and later big towns, like Nairobi, Jinja and Kampala. When I was pastor of the Goan parish I enjoyed their hospitality and experienced their deep faith and strong family life.

The days of Dictator dictator, originally a Roman magistrate appointed to rule the state in times of emergency; in modern usage, an absolutist or autocratic ruler who assumes extraconstitutional powers. From 501 B.C. until the abolition of the office in 44 B.C., Rome had 88 dictators. Idi Amin were bad. In 1972 the people of Asian origin, including the Goans Goans is the term used to describe the people of the former Portuguese colony of Goa, on the west coast of India. "Goanese" is considered to be incorrect usage, and offensive by some.

Goans comprise a mixed Hindu and Roman Catholic population. , were ordered out of the country. It happened at my doorstep, since the church was across from the Parliament Buildings Parliament Buildings may refer to:

Parliament Buildings (Northern Ireland) (Stormont)
Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada
British Columbia Parliament Buildings

Parliament Buildings can refer to the following places:

and the bus-stop for the airport. Within three months the Goan community of Christ the King The Community of Christ the King (CCK) is an Anglican religious order of Benedictine nuns, based in Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1993, this enclosed and contemplative order is under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church of Australia. parish was decimated. And many settled in Canada. I left Uganda in 1973 and have been working in the Kingston Archdiocese arch·di·o·cese
n.
The district under an archbishop's jurisdiction.

archdi·oc since 1974. As can be imagined I have met many of my former parishioners, those I baptised Adj. 1. baptised - having undergone the Christian ritual of baptism
baptized and married, in Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver. My wish is the same as the article in Catholic Insight says: that the Goan community may prosper and continue to live a strong faith and family life in our modern Canada.

Prescott, ON

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Publication:	Catholic Insight
Article Type:	Letter to the Editor
Date:	Apr 1, 2003
Words:	330
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