CHILDREN’S WISHES ON HIS 80th BIRTHDAY

Articles from Old Newspapers & Magazines and Translated Articles on MSGR. HERCULANO GONSALVES from Portuguese to English

CHILDREN’S WISHES ON HIS 80th BIRTHDAY

8th February1948

{Thanks to the translator, Mr. Simao Sebastiao Fernandes, Dona Julia Apts, St. Cruz, Goa.}

Most Reverend Monsignor, Herculano Damasceno Gonsalves The noble, although not yet opulent parish of Calangute, of verdant palm trees planted along the seashore, commemorates today the 80th birth anniversary of Your Excellency. We, the little children of Calangute, representing all the children of Goa, make use of this happy opportunity to manifest our gratitude for the affection and tenderness with which Your Excellency has welcomed our unfortunate girl-companions who were in the misfortune of losing the parents. It is said that, happy are those who have father, and tender those who have mother. Only those who have no parents, either because the Heavenly Father took them away, or because the parents have abandoned their children, can imagine and understand how great is the unhappiness of the lack of parents. Oh God from the Heaven, how many orphans will not be there in this world, left to their fate? The little orphan girls of Stº Aleixo (St. Alex), feel their misfortune reduced, because they can consider themselves happy and delightful, since Our Lord has sent to them a big and generous heart, allying to the dedication of father, the affection and the tenderness of mother, being, in this manner, compensated by the great Divine Wisdom, what the lack of parents, has deprived them of. This big and compassionate heart, is the one of Your Excellency who came to wipe their tears, relieve their hunger and quench their thirst, teaching them to prepare themselves to, in the future, be useful to their own selves, to the society and to the Country. They are plants which Your Excellency is watering with care and tenderness, and which one day shall bloom into fragrant flowers to perfume the ambient of your paternal love and simplicity of your noble heart. To our juvenile mentality, without terms in thinking in the great active which Your Excellency is going to bequeath unto us, only the Orphanage of St. Aleixo (St. Alex) is enough to, as a model of grandeur of your work and of the value of your action, to perpetuate with honour and glory, the well-beloved name of Your Excellency. Children of rich families, kissing the faces of their parents on their birth anniversaries, hide into their hands beautiful and fresh bouquets of most beautiful and fragrant flowers of their eye-catching gardens, and we, little children, on this your jubilant day, greet Your Excellency effusively, respectfully kissing your hands, offering the Almighty our sincere prayers, with our communions, for Him to keep you for long years through, to see the legitimate fruits which should blossom out of your exemplar life full of toils, of weariness and of sacrifices. Long live Mons.

– Herculano Damasceno Gonsalves

Calangute, 11-2-1948