Faith shining through the darkness

Faith shining through the darkness Fr Tomás King celebrating Mass and meeting local children in St Nicholas' Parish, Nagar Parkar in the south east of Pakistan.

In spite of his surname, Columban Fr Tomás King, has lived a life far removed from social prestige and wealth, spending the past 25 years away from his Irish home, in a country which suffers from internal political disputes, severe poverty and ongoing violence.

His journey from working with the Traveller community in Galway to helping families deal daily with injustice and death in Pakistan has been a challenging and inspiring one, where he realised he had been “taking things for granted”.

Although Fr Tomás was raised in a traditional Irish Catholic family where the Rosary was said at night, his interest in religion and subsequent decision to join the Columbans was influenced by missionary magazines like the Far East which his mother bought, as well as the contemplative moments he had working in the family farm for five years.

“Reading magazines growing up, the interest of being overseas, things beyond Ireland kind of developed,” Fr Tomás says.

“I would have worked on the farm my whole life but somehow I had the sense it wasn’t for me. It did maybe help with the reflective disposition to be able to live with oneself.”

Combined with his desire to help people in poor countries, Fr Tomás saw the priesthood “as one way of doing it”, and today finds himself serving the poor families in Sindh province, including the vast Tharparkar desert, in Pakistan’s south-east, bordering with India.

The transition from Ireland has been a poignant one, with socio-economic and political conditions resulting in higher child mortality.

“The more difficult things are probably all the funerals I’ve presided over the years – there’d be as many children as adults.

“You go into a graveyard and you see all of these mounds of clay, and the big mounds of clay are adults and the small mounds are children. In some places, it’s 50:50.”

Alongside this “needless death”, as Fr Tomás describes it, he also works with groups who are primarily working as bonded labourers, who live in a state of constant debt to their landlords, which although against the law, is not tackled properly in Pakistan as the parliament benefit from the corrupt practice.

In the midst of this exploitation, Fr Tomás sees the vulnerable as a strong and courageous people who are fighting against all the odds to stay alive.

“What’s amazing is the resilience of people – that no matter how poor and how much injustice they are suffering, people want to live, people want to try their best for the children.”

One lucid memory Fr Tomás draws upon to illustrate this is the image of a young woman squatting in a field making chapatti, a flat thin bread on a flat pan. The woman had few possessions, but managed to build a mud stove, and then kneaded the dough, broke it into pieces and then flattened it with the palms of her hands, keeping an eye on her infant child the whole time.

Real Presence

“The Eucharist was being celebrated right before our eyes; as the woman baked the bread and shared it with her family. There was no doubt about the Real Presence in the making and breaking of bread by that young woman.

“By her actions, you could almost imagine her saying to the world, ‘no matter what you throw at me nothing will stop me from baking and breaking bread. I will go on nurturing life’.”

This crossing of boundaries, of new experiences and encounters has provided Fr Tomás with the “strength” to keep going forward, and to learn more about himself, the world, and God’s role within it. He uses the famous St Columban quote, “a life unlike your own can be your teacher” to help him to remember this.

“In two weeks’ time, I might be sitting on a mud floor in a village somewhere. It is a privilege, there’s a lot to be grateful for, to enter into the lives of so many people.”

Not only is he appreciative of the brave communities in Pakistan, but also those in Ireland who have supported him despite the scandals and conflict within the Church.

“There was and still is strong support from the local community, even though the Church is going through a very difficult time, and even many people who have stopped practicing, when you meet people at home, face to face, they still have a lot of respect.”

Although Fr Tomás is aware that not everyone in Ireland and around the globe can pursue a missionary vocation, he believes that we all have a role in changing the world, even if it begins by firstly changing ourselves.

“The Church by her nature should always try to be missionary, whether at home or abroad,” he says, adding, “it has to continue to go beyond itself.

“The primary conversion is trying to be a better person, be a better human being – to live by one’s principles, and trying to make one’s principles stronger.”