Catholics have no problem with NJAC and Daaga

Patrick Manning has been urging the nation - and in particular the Roman Catholic community - to reject the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) and its leader, Makandal Daaga.

The party is one of the members of the opposition People's Partnership fighting the PNM one on one in the May 24 general election.

The leader of the PNM has said more than once on the political hustings that Catholics should remember Daaga and NJAC for the "desecration" of the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Port of Spain during the 1970 Black Power uprising.

But a high ranking Catholic priest disagrees. Monsignor Christian Perreira told the Trinidad Express what happened at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was not considered as a "desecration" of that sacred place.

Manning is insisting that it is and that NJAC should apologise to the R.C. Church.

But Monsignor Perreira told the paper NJAC had expressed its apology in countless number of ways in the last 40 years for what happened at the Cathedral.

He added that the relationship between Daaga and his wife, Leiselle, and the late Archbishop Anthony Pantin in the last 20 years of Pantin’s life was very positive.

He also noted that Pantin was on NJAC's Commission on Race Relations, which was chaired by Leiselle.

"I mean, NJAC gave Archbishop Pantin a gift for his office on his 30th anniversary and there were many positive things, many conversations and mutual support...There has been no indication that the Archbishop considered it a desecration," Perreira said.

"The fact is that the demonstrators engaged in a dialogue with the priests at the Cathedral at that time and that dialogue was very conciliatory...this led to positive things between the Church and all those who were seeking what was best for the society," he said.

Perreira pointed out that it is unfair to single out NJAC because "a lot of the political parties and organisations...(have done) very sacrilegious things to the Roman Catholic Church."

He noted that there was a "great feud" between the R.C. Church and the PNM government, particularly in its first days, "as indeed there were conflicts between the R.C. Church and other parties, including the United Labour Front (ULF).

"There have been negative things between the PNM and the Catholic Church but there has been a lot of positive things as well," Perreira told the paper. And he said NJAC had been very important in the cultural development of the society.

"The fact is that the society has grown between 1970 and 2010 and different organisations have grown," he said adding that it is wrong to cling to "the negatives of the past because all of us do wrong things."

He added, "All groups and organisations have made mistakes of one kind or another, and the important thing is to learn from our mistakes...Once we maintain the values that we hold dear, we will always have tensions with people at one time or another. But we learn and grow from them," he said.