1930

The bell heard in the wood

In Rome, Bishop Roche laid his people's homage before Pope Pius XI, and the Pope sent mementoes back for the most deserving Christians of Tuticorin. One of them went to the old sacristan of Vadakenkoulam, brother to a vicar general and to the superior of a convent, and still, at eighty-two, keeping the sacristy of this church. He was given the Bene Merenti medal. The Jesuits' magazine printed his years and his office, and forgot to print his name. It need not have troubled: the office was older than the man. Forty years before, a visitor had been told that the sacristanship here had been held in one family for two hundred years, and had been given the reason. A man and his wife, on pilgrimage to a pagoda, lost their road in a wood full of tigers. Night came down on them; they called on their gods, and nothing answered; and then, a long way off, they heard a bell. They went towards it and came to the door of a hut, where an old man set rice and bananas before them and gave them a bed for the night. In the morning they asked him the way on to the pagoda. He raised his eyes to Heaven, made the sign of the Cross, and began instead to speak to them of the God they had never heard of, and he spoke so well that they went no further. In a short time they were the most fervent Christians in the village. The husband was made sacristan of this church, and thought it no small privilege to ring the bell that had been the means of his own salvation. “The descendants of these good pilgrims are many in number,” the visitor wrote; “I have known several of them who are exemplary priests.”

DocumentedThis moment rests on 2 sources.

The Month 1889p. 255

When the Masses were over, the congregation poured out by the two doors on to the square in front, and dispersed in silence to their various quarters through the deserted streets. At Vadakenkoulam there is a man in whose family the office of sacristan has been hereditary for two centuries. The following is his account of the circumstances under which it was originally given to his ancestors. In the commencement of the eighteenth century, two heathens, a man and his wife, journeying to a place of pilgrimage in Southern India, lost their way in a wood infested by tigers.

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What this source establishes

⭐ The family behind the 1930 medal. The office held in one family for TWO CENTURIES, the ancestor converted by hearing a bell in a wood at night and made sacristan, who "deemed it no small privilege to ring the bell which had been the means of his salvation" -- and "the descendants of these good pilgrims are many in number; I have known several of them who are exemplary priests", which is why the man honoured in 1930 was brother to a vicar general and to a convent superior.