By Angelo Fernando
You may know Fr. Claver as the man of many parts. But there are some phases of his life–those ‘parts unknown’–few remember. I never knew that the young Peter Claver as an altar server, mind you, used to complain about a preacher’s “unintelligible sermons” that would put people to sleep. Or that, when he entered the university of Peradaniya (this was long before he felt the call to priesthood) he actually enjoyed the rag which consisted of “raw language and shady jokes.” Fr. Claver? Who knew! He thought that ragging then was decent, full of pun and word play and the worst thing was getting bucketed with lavatory water.
He speaks of chatting in the canteen about incidents in the girls hall. Then there was a time (and this relates to and this relates to the golden voice we all remember) that he describes thus:
“On some moonlight nights, we…. would sit on the curves on either side of the road (near Arunachalam Hall) and sing our four part harmonies which wafted through the cool silent night air.”
It gets better. Students would come to the hall balconies to listen to them, some would hoot, and some tossed water at them. Seems like that’s how he learned to take on his critics, later in life.
The Book: Seasoned Timber
Now he didn’t tell us students these things. But if you dig into his book, Seasoned Timber, he has left us these nuggets of his early years. The book doesn’t have a publication date, but it might have been in 2009. It is extremely autobiographical, social, and religious. It contains sharp commentary on biblical events, and people such as Barack Obama, Brazilian archbishop Helder Camara, and even Cardinal Montini (later pope Paul V1) whom Fr. Claver came into contact with, during his time at Propaganda college, Rome.
Seasoned Timber' by Fr. Claver
But I want to share another side of Fr. Claver through two remarkable events. As the rector of St. Peter’s College, Bambalapitiya he was a much feared principal. He once called my parents to a meeting because of a transgression I cannot (conveniently perhaps) recall. Needless to say, it was serious. As a teacher now, I know that when the principal calls your parents, you are a marked man. But this is not one of the ‘events’ I am referring to. The first of the two was a pilgrimage, and the other was what became known as the ‘Buwatenne affair.’
Pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land
In 1978, I was studying for my A-levels. Fr. Claver told me he had something important to discuss with my parents. I was apparently not in trouble this time, so I calmed down. One evening he visited our home down Clifford Place and told my parents that he was inviting me to go on a pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land. My parents, though shocked, agreed. Fr. Claver had received a grant to go on this pilgrimage with two students. The other student was, of course, Geoffrey Alagaratnam, then a law student.
And then one humid morning in July 1989 we were standing behind the barricades in Vatican Square waiting to catch a glimpse of the newly elected Pope John Paul II. The pontiff waved to the crowds, and we vigorously waved back as all pilgrims do. We must have been about 200 feet away from a man whose white ‘zucchetto’ or skull cap was about to take off. He stepped down the dais with the agility of a hiker and headed in our direction. Fr. Claver froze as JPII extended his hand. Fr. Claver bent and kissed his ring. The nuns in a row behind us were super jealous. I don’t know about Geoffrey, but the only thing I could do was point my Kodak camera and keep pressing the shutter. Fortunately with film cameras these pictures still hold up as you can see. In front of us we had hung a batik poster over the barricade, with the words ‘Sri Lanka’ hand written below. Was that the draw, or was Peter Claver’s magnetism? We will never know. The pontiff asked us about the country and we invited him to visit. From that day on Fr. Claver never stopped talking about this Polish priest who defied the Soviet Union, and became the first non-Italian pope. He had found his new Helder Camara.
Fr Claver in mufti with Angelo in Rome 1978
The other incident happened two years prior. First some background. Fr. Claver often took us (Ned Gomez, Tyronne Paiva, Tyron Devotta and me) on reflective trips-slash retreats to convents and retreat centers. He never told us why, and we were probably too naive to figure it out. Our former principal had morphed into what we would now call our spiritual director–lots of moral hectoring, and religious teaching– and choral director, with doses of literature, and theatrical direction on the side.
The Buwatenne Affair
Now back to the Buwatenne incident. One of these retreats was to a remote irrigation site off Matale, to a hamlet known as Buwatenne. Fr. Claver’s brother-in-law, Mr. Bartlett, was working on this part of the Mahaveli diversion scheme; his circuit bungalow was our destination. On this trip were Jerome De Silva, Kevin Gomez and myself. Geoffrey had cancelled at the last moment. We took the train up to Kandy and were picked up by a project driver. The next morning someone suggested we walk to the irrigation channel a mile or so away. We decided to make a picnic of it, so armed with a bottle of milk toffee provided by Ms. Noreen De Zilva, towels, Readers Digests, and sandwiches, we left the bungalow in a jolly mood. We would return in a very different state. Minus the milk toffee.
On our long walk, Fr. Claver made it a point as he always did, to talk about the beauty of the ‘rustic’ environment. But from within the rusticity we were suddenly accosted by about twenty young men. They carried stout clubs and began interrogating us about our identity. After accusing us of being Tamils, they began beating us. Unknown to us, ethnic trouble had broken out the previous day. Refugees had been sent to a nearby bungalow. We just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. We probably looked the part, although two of us were indeed Tamils. Fr. Claver, the non-Tamil, took the worst blows, specifically on the right side of his face by his temple. He fell down by the channel bloodied, while we tried in vain to defend ourselves and tell them that this was a priest they were attacking. Suddenly–miraculously, for sure–the mob left us. We picked up Fr. Claver and began to limp back to the house. Some phone calls were made and we were whisked to the Matale hospital. The next day an army vehicle arrived and took us to Kandy. We were deposited at the Ampitiya seminary which had been turned into a large refugee camp. We stayed there until things cooled down.
Fr. Claver's author biography from 'Seasoned Timber'
You probably never heard of this incident. Fr. Claver never made his sermons all about him. They were acerbic. Certainly not the kind that made someone doze off. We often joked that the church didn’t need new microphones because Fr. Claver’s voice sliced through the air and easily reached Lauries Road. Whether it was at the climax of midnight Christmas mass when his “O Holy Night” nearly splintered the stained glass windows, or whether it was at choir practice when he would rip into us for messing up a part, his words, like his passion for his priesthood came through.
Angelo Fernando is now a computer and technology teacher in a high school in the US. He was part of St. Peter’s college choir for a few years, hiding between heavyweights such as Maithree Kurukulasuriya and (Fr.) Tony Martin. Fr. Claver was a mentor, and also his English literature teacher for his A-Levels