Archbishop Pantin – the Saint I knew

By Fr Martin Sirju, Vicar General

March 12 marked the silver jubilee of the death of Archbishop Gordon Anthony Pantin CSSp. His cause, as we know, is before the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

It would be wonderful to have the witness of a local or regional cleric, religious sister or lay person officially declared a saint. It would reassure us that saintliness is within our grasp, in our own culture and context.

My first encounter with Archbishop Pantin was when I was about eight or nine years old. I met him after Mass outside our parish church of St Patrick’s in Fullerton, Cedros. He said something to me like—my recollection is not clear—I had bright eyes, or I looked like a bright boy. But I distinctly remember the word “bright”.

I remember him coming to our parish church more than once and he had us laughing with the same jokes he would tell all the time. My major encounter with him after that was when I became a seminarian and then priest. It did not take me long in my sojourn as a priest to feel very strongly this man was a saint.

I remember Fr Henry Charles asking me once, “You think Tony is a saint?” to which I immediately answered, “Yes”. It was, first of all, something I felt. Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher felt that faith was not based so much on doctrine or reason but upon man’s “feeling of absolute dependence”; what he called “a sense and taste for the Infinite.”

To me, Archbishop Pantin was translucent—the divine passed through him without hindrance. I always felt he had that “sense and taste for the Infinite.” I think that is a feature of extraordinarily ordinary people.

In the narthex of the Cathedral stands a sign with a quote by G K Chesterton: “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” I always found Archbishop Pantin to be extraordinarily ordinary.

He drove an ordinary car—the famous Nissan Sunny, standard shift, no power widows nor AC; loved ordinary people particularly and joked with them; wore what looked like the same ordinary cassock all the time; and he perfumed himself with ordinary Limacol. He loved picking up the ordinary people on the way to Mass or giving them a lift back home.

I never heard him say he was humble, but I have heard many say, “I’m a humble man.” I don’t believe them of course for the simple reason that humble people don’t know they are humble. Like saints.

The most fitting witness to that humility and ordinariness was seen when Pope John Paul visited Trinidad and Tobago in 1985. All the dignitaries arrived in their fancy vehicles but he in his ‘put-put’. When the crowd finally saw him, he was greeted with a lusty round of applause and standing ovation.

What impressed me about him is that while he spoke about people, he never dragged down anyone. I never heard him speak of anyone in a demeaning sort of way–never a scorner: “blessed is he who does not sit in the company of scorners” (Ps 1:1). He was very far from the toxicity of modern social media.

Long before ‘motivational speakers’ and ‘influencers’, he moved me by how he spoke, how he influenced. He was always affirming. Whether the choir pulled some bad notes, the reading near awful, or the food not so tasty, his response was, “Oh wonderful! You all did so well.” I am more inclined to tell you what I think.

I think everyone knew that Archbishop Pantin was a man of prayer. He began with his meditation about 4.30 a.m., recited his Office, prayed the rosary and then celebrated Mass. Every day. The habit of prayer–the first sign of a dynamic Catholic as cited by Matthew Kelly. He was a bedrock of consistency in prayer.

Saints also have wide appeal once they are known. He was popular not only in our Archdiocese but neighbouring dioceses as well. Several priests of other dioceses told me their parishioners looked forward more to a visit from Archbishop Pantin than their own bishop.

They loved his humour and his capacity to relate with people throughout the AEC region. His holiness and humility were ‘received’, like sound doctrine.

Like all saints, he had his imperfections. Many of us clergy know them. But saints are imperfect perfections. Like Pope John XXIII who said his cheerful countenance often conceals “inner anguish and torment of soul”, so too Archbishop Pantin had his dark moments.

He once said to me: “The Archbishop of Port of Spain must be the loneliest man in the world.” As a young priest, I was rather surprised and stunned by my bishop’s honesty. Saints suffer silently.

True saints are naturally acclaimed. At his passing the people of this land said: “The spiritual father of the nation is dead.” It was a title conferred on him by all classes, religions and ethnicities.

The current members of the Inter Religious Organisation are in favour of his Cause and willing to testify on his behalf. That kind of comprehensive appeal is a sign of saintliness.

Archbishop Pantin added to the immense variety of saints. C S Lewis put it well: “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints.”