New deacon says he’s finally answering the call

DOMINICA

Darril Thomas was ordained a transitional deacon, Saturday, October 12 at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Wesley, Dominica. Bishop Kendrick Forbes of Roseau was the main celebrant.

Dominica News Online reported the ceremony marked another step in his journey towards the priesthood – “a call he had always entertained but ran away from for a long period of time”.

Rev Thomas was born and raised in the northeastern community of Calibishie in a family with a strong Catholic background. He said after receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation and during his teenage years, he strayed from the Church but the idea of becoming a priest always lingered at the back of his mind.

“I must say it has always been there, I was always thinking, I was always interested in becoming a priest,” he stated. “The only thing is that I thought I wanted to be a priest if only priests could get married.”

He observed different priests and their way of life, and their attitudes were of great interest to him. Despite these influences and the lingering call in his mind to be a priest, he ran away from the idea of priesthood for a long period of time.

Rev Thomas said he made his final decision between 2014 and 2015 when he became much more active in the church.

“I never really left the church, but I was not very active,” he said. “When I came back in 2014, I remember we had a men’s retreat in our parish. One of the young men invited me and I came back, and I gave my testimony and from that I stayed.”

Thomas also recalled attending a Protestant church close to his home during which the pastor, a former Catholic, made a statement on the Eucharist and the members of the congregation laughed.

He never returned to that church, but the statement led him on a journey of searching for the truth and meaning of the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.

In January 2016, Thomas left Dominica to study philosophy in Colombia, where he was the only student from the Caribbean. He did his studies in theology at The University of the West Indies (online because of Covid) and at the Seminary of St John Vianney and the Uganda Martyrs in Trinidad. He graduated this year.

When asked what the reaction of his family, friends, and coworkers to his decision was to his becoming a priest, Rev Thomas said “My parents took it very well because they are practising the faith, and they are always at church”…. “But my grandmother said she knew I would become a priest from since I was small because from six years, I was reenacting the Mass at home.”