Sacred Hearts brother Ajit Baliar Singh
Bishop Larry Silva will ordain a member of St. Damien’s religious order to the priesthood on the 150th anniversary of the saint’s own ordination, in the same spot the Belgian missionary was ordained.
The bishop will ordain Sacred Hearts brother Ajit Baliar Singh during a 6 p.m. Mass May 21 in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu.
A day of recollection for priests at St. Stephen Diocesan Center, led by the retired Archbishop of San Francisco George H. Niederauer, will precede the ordination.
Singh, 35, is a member of the India region of the U.S. Province of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts.
He was born in Tamangi Village in the district of Kandhamal, in the state of Orissa, India, one of eight children of Benedict Baliar Singh and the late Sisily Baliar Singh. He entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts in 2001.
After completing his bachelor of arts and philosophy studies, he spent a pre-novitiate year in Kolkata and his novitiate year, 2009-2010, in the Philippines.
Singh made his first profession as a Sacred Hearts brother on May 8, 2010, in Manila. He returned to India to study theology at Morning Star College, Kolkata, completing his courses in November 2013.
Plaque on the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace identifying it as the place of St. Damien’s ordination.
He made his final vows this year on Jan. 11 and was ordained a deacon the following day by Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Kolkata in Immaculate Conception Church in Serampore in West Bengal, just north of Kolkata.
According to Father Johnathan Hurrell, superior of the Sacred Hearts Congregation’s U.S. province, the idea to honor the 150th anniversary of St. Damien’s ordination with another ordination came from Bishop Larry Silva.
Father Hurrell initially told the bishop there was a candidate in India, but that “it was not really feasible for us to send him here.”
“However,” Father Hurrell said, “it came to light that, in his village, for political and religious reasons, it was too dangerous for him to be ordained there.”
So after further discussion, the ordination was arranged. Singh will be traveling to Hawaii on a tourist visa.
After his ordination, Father Singh will be assigned back in India at the Damien Social Institute in Bhubaneswar, in the state of Orissa where Sacred Hearts brothers and sisters serve the poor in the villages and tribal areas though a clinic, schools and other social work.
St. Damien was a seminarian when he arrived in Honolulu on March 19, 1864. He had been allowed to volunteer for the Hawaii missionary assignment, even though he was not yet a priest, to take the place of his brother Sacred Hearts Father Pamphile de Veuster who had been too ill to make the journey.
Damien finished his seminary studies in the Islands. He was ordained a deacon about a month after his arrival in Hawaii and ordained a priest a month after that on May 21, 1864, in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.
The ordination will be live-streamed on the Internet at www.hictv.com.
