“Many Icelanders don’t have a clue about religion”

This is a full transcript, in the original English, of my interview with Fr. Jakob Rolland, of the Catholic Church in Iceland and chairman of the Icelandic Interfaith Forum, in which capacity I spoke to him about recent attempts to forbid circumcision for religious reasons in that country.

UPDATE: Since publishing this transcript it was brought to my attention that the proposed bill has been scrapped. Although good news, this in no way makes the interview less interesting, especially in respect to growing ignorance of religion and its importance among Icelanders. The interview was, naturally, recorded months ago, before the proposal was scrapped.

Esta é uma transcrição integral, no inglês original, da minha entrevista com o Padre Jakob Rolland, da Igreja Católica na Islândia e secretário-geral do Fórum Inter-religioso islandês. Foi nesta capacidade que conversei com ele sobre a possibilidade de se proibir a circuncisão por motivos religiosos naquele país. A reportagem pode ser lida aqui.

What are the Jewish and Muslim communities in Iceland like? And how did they react to this proposal?

There is a very, very small Jewish community, we don't know exactly, because this community is not registered, there is no organised community of Jewish people, so the figures go from 35 to 200, we do not really know how many. But it is a very small community.

But they are expecting a rabbi to be nominated this year, and he will probably come to Iceland this Summer and constitute a community.

The Muslims are more numerous, maybe around 2000 in Iceland, and they are divided into five different communities. For them and for the Jews, this is a very serious issue, because for Jewish people circumcision is mandatory, they have to have the boys circumcised on their eighth day of life, and that is probably the only Jewish practice that all the Jewish people do. Other practices, like eating kosher, or keeping feast days like Yom Kippur, or Shabbat, and so on, some people follow them and others don't. But I think almost 100% have circumcision. For them it’s not an option.

For the Muslims it is not so important from a religious perspective. Almost all Muslims practice Circumcision, but it’s more cultural than religious. It has always been part of the Muslim religion, but they are not so strict regarding the age, for example, it is quite common for them to have children circumcised at five or six, or even later, but they also insist on continuing this tradition.

Have they spoken out on this issue?

There was no debate on it before. The debate started at the end of January, this year, before that one had never heard about this issue in Iceland.

But since the debate did begin, how have they reacted?

We have heard nothing from the Jewish community. Since they are not constituted as a community and they don't have any spokesman, so we didn't hear anything. But we heard a lot from the Jewish communities abroad, especially from the Northern countries, Denmark and Sweden and Finland. These are very concerned on behalf of the few Jewish people in Iceland.

And the Muslims community, three of them are members of the Interfaith Forum, that is an informal group of 18 religions in Iceland, for inter-religious dialogue and promoting religious freedom and human rights and issues which concern all the religions. And within the framework of this Interfaith Forum, they brought forward this issue at the beginning of February, to ask for a reaction. Their first intention was that the Forum should issue a statement, but it appeared that this would not be possible because most of the 18 religions represented in the Forum are against the ban, but some are in favour, or have no opinion, so there was no unanimity within the Forum, of which I am the chairman.

So we said we cannot make a statement, because some of the members are not in agreement. But then we came to the conclusion that we can organise a conference, where the Jewish and the Muslims can express their concern and publicly explain the Parliament in Iceland, and to the public, why this issue is so serious for them. And on that point we had unanimity, to organise this conference, without taking a formal position for or against, but giving them an opportunity to listen to the reasons for the bill and to express their own opinion.

When Parliament is passing a bill which concerns, first of all, the Jews and the Muslims, the least it can to is to listen to the Jews and to the Muslims.

O bispo da Islândia, David Tencer

So I take it for granted that the members of Parliament who presented this bill had not spoken to, or met with, the Muslim or Jewish community, before they presented it.

It seems not. I couldn't see any sign that they had any contact with the Muslim Community before presenting this bill, and none at all with the Jewish, we could see that when the person who presented the bill received news of the reaction of rabbis from all over Europe a few days later and said, publicly, in Parliament, that she didn't expect any reaction from the rabbis. That was a strange statement, because if anyone was going to react, it was the rabbis.

That brings up an interesting point. I have been following these debates in many countries in Europe and I have noticed that there seem to be two different cases. In some it seems to be open hostility to Muslims and Jews, disguised as care for children or for animal's rights. In other cases it seems to stem from pure ignorance or religious illiteracy. Is the latter the case here?

Absolutely, absolutely. I would say there is a lot of ignorance about religious issues.

Icelanders themselves, most of them are Christians, a third of the population belongs to the Lutheran State Church, but very few people have deep notion of their religion, and very few practice on a daily base. So for them religion is completely secondary and they have difficulty understanding that for other people religion is essential and an important part of their daily life.

Just before this conversation I was attending a meeting of the Interfaith Forum to evaluate the conference, and everybody agreed that it was a very good conference, but one of them said "I got many reactions from people who followed the conference on live stream and many of them, independently of one another, told me that they had never realised that religion can be so important for some people".

So that means that many Icelanders don't have a clue about religion, and that reflects the materialistic mentality in this country. Iceland is a very rich country, very materialistic, and unfortunately religion is not very visible and not very appreciated in the life of many Icelanders.

Could we describe it as a post-Christian country?

Exactly. You know Iceland was a Catholic country until the reformation, and then it became Lutheran by decision of the King of Denmark, and slowly afterwards, after the XIX Century, religion receded to the private sphere, at home, and nowadays has a very small impact on the public life.

Going back to the issue at hand, you mentioned that there was no reaction from the Interfaith Forum. But has the Catholic Church itself taken a position?

Yes. Our bishop wrote a letter which, right from the beginning, when the Muslims asked the Interfaith Forum to react to the bill, that same day our bishop wrote a letter to this Muslim leader, Salman Tamimi, to support his request and support the request of the Jewish and the Muslim community, that circumcision should not be banned in Iceland, by law.

He pointed out that we Christians insist more on the spiritual aspect of circumcision, like St. Paul says, first of all it is a question of conversion of hearts, and not of physical circumcision. Nevertheless, he says, it is a question of freedom of religion and we support the requests of these communities.

This is one specific threat... Are there other threats to religious liberty in Iceland? For example, freedom of conscience, issues with euthanasia and abortion?

I cannot say anything about freedom of conscience, I'm not sure what the law is. I have a friend who was working in a hospital and he was very much in the obstetrics and maternity section, and that is the same section where they have abortions, and he said this he would not do, it is against his conscience, and they respected that.

So I think there must be some law which protects freedom of conscience.

In fact we should investigate this a little bit more, because a bill on Euthanasia is also coming now. So it is important for us to know the legislative aspect.

There are other threats to religion... In the city of Reykjavik, in the schools run by the city, there is no teaching of religion anymore. It was the case until around five or ten years ago, but now it is no longer permitted. There are some classes of introduction to religion, where they talk a little bit about Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, in a very superficial manner, but there are no more religion classes in a proper sense. This leads to a generation, growing up now, which has no notion at all about religion. They would stand in front of the Pietá, in Rome, during their holidays, and ask “who is this lady, with this dead man in her hands?” They do not know anything about religion...

Are there any private schools owned by churches?

One, which belongs to the Adventist Church. And they have religious classes, but from the point of view of the Adventists, of course. But at least they teach some Bible stories, and I know that some Lutheran people send their kids to that school for that reason, because then at least they have some religious instruction and hear something about the Bible.

I saw from your website that the majority of the priests working in Iceland do not seem to be Icelandic. I would say that is your case as well...

I am French.

Could you characterise the Church in Iceland?

The Church is a tiny minority in this country, we have about 13 thousand people registered, which is not very much. The reality is probably a little bit more, because there are many people who come for a shorter or longer period of time, to work in Iceland, but they do not register in the Church, so the real number is probably 20 thousand.

I think around 90% of our Catholic Community are foreigners. They do not know any Icelandic, they do not integrate, they come to work, they have no intention to stay here, and that means that the Catholic Community is mainly Polish, around 70% of Polish origin, and the others are from many different countries, and so for us it becomes very difficult to create a sense of community.

We do not have a common language, the priests are from different countries and the Icelanders from our Catholic Community are in a minority, and for them it is very difficult, firstly to be in minority among Icelanders and then, within the Catholic Church, to be a minority again. That makes it very difficult for Icelanders, and that is really a challenge for us, to try to create occasions to bring together all these different groups.

It also means that the Catholic Church has almost no voice in the Icelandic society, or very little, because we are almost all foreigners, so nobody listens very much to the Catholic Church here.

When you were mentioning that some of the member churches of the Interfaith Forum had no opinion and some agreed with the prohibition of circumcision, just out of curiosity, I imagine the majority church would be the Lutheran... What was their position?

There are divided opinions also within the Lutheran Church, but the bishop of the Lutheran Church had a very strong statement, that she cannot agree that circumcision should be forbidden, and especially with a punishment of six years of imprisonment.

In other countries where these issues have been discussed we have seen that they produce a side effect, in that they bring the different religious communities together. Has that happened in Iceland?

The Interfaith Forum has existed for almost 12 years, and interreligious dialogue has never come to such a deep level of friendship and dialogue. Today some people even used the word love. We have never experienced that as much as until now.

Inter-religious statement on euthanasia, in Portugal

Care, with compassion, until the end

Inter-religious statement on euthanasia

The debate currently underway in Portugal about what has been labelled “assisted death” invites all of us to reflect and offer their contribution to enrich a process of dialogue which requires the intervention of all social agents. The religious traditions bear a message about the life and death of man, as well as the model of society we build, and it is both legitimate and necessary that they present this message with freedom and humility.

At a time when Parliament debates and prepares to vote on proposals for a possible law on euthanasia, we, the undersigned religious communities present in Portugal, having gathered to discuss and reflect together, and aware that we are living moments of great importance for our time collective future, do declare:

1. The dignity of those who suffer

We believe that each human being is unique and, as such, irreplaceable and necessary to the society of which he or she is a part, bestowed with an intrinsic dignity which is prior to any criteria of quality of life or usefulness, until the time of natural death. Not only does life not lose its dignity as it draws to its end, but the vulnerability with which it is clothed in this stage is, rather, a badge of special dignity which requires proximity and care. We do believe that suffering should be avoided if possible and, therefore, we give thanks for the fact that medical and pharmacological sciences have developed to such an extent that they allow for an effective relief of pain and promotion of well-being. However, we do not ignore the dramatic nature of suffering and the difficulty in finding meaning in continued life. We are aware that religion offers the possibility of meaning to those who believe, but we also know, from experience in accompanying so many who are not religious, that belief is not a necessary condition to finding meaning in one’s own suffering. With these our brothers we learn, indeed, that this task represents one of the greatest achievements of personal dignity. One’s dignity does not depend on anything other than existence as a person and personal autonomy cannot be emptied of its social meaning.

2. For a merciful and compassionate society

The suffering at the end of life is a spiritual challenge for each individual and an ethical challenge for society as a whole. Principles such as mercy and compassion are common to the different religious traditions and, over the history of civilization, have given rise to social models capable of creating, in each period, precise ways of accompanying and caring for the most fragile members of society. Today, human death is one of the areas which challenges us. What is asked of us is not that we give up on those living their final stages of life, by offering them the legal possibility of death, which can be the result of suffering without adequate care. It is this suffering which is truly unbearable and which gives rise to the will to die. It is the fruit of a society which abandons, which loses its humanity and becomes indifferent. Our beliefs in this respect are confirmed by our experience that people who are properly accompanied neither despair nor ask to die. What is asked of us, therefore, is that we commit ourselves more deeply to those who are living through this stage, taking upon ourselves the necessity of offering them a humane and accompanied death.  

3. Palliative Care, a necessity which cannot be delayed

We believe that palliative care is the most complete expression of this service which the state is obliged to give, since it results from the highest technical and scientific skill and competence in compassion, both of which are needed when dealing with people in the final stage of life. True compassion does not insist on futile treatment in an attempt to prolong life, but helps people to experience their own death as humanely as possible, recognising that it is only natural. Palliative care values a person until their natural end, alleviating their suffering, fighting off loneliness through the presence of family and other loved ones. We ask Portuguese society to rise up to this challenge, which can no longer be postponed, of making palliative care available to all, and we take upon ourselves the task of doing all that we possibly can to participate in this national effort. We cannot help but to ask if this current debate, preceding as it does an investment in proper palliative care, does not betray a lack of truth.

Religious traditions profess that life is a precious gift, with Abrahamic religions stressing that it is a gift from God and, as such, sacred in nature; but this only confirms its natural dignity, from whence stem its inherent inviolability and unavailability which, therefore, do not rest on religious foundations. But religion does give life a meaning, a hope and other possibilities of transcendence. Societies need this vision of man to stand alongside all the others which exist.

We, the religious communities present in Portugal, believe that life is inviolable until natural death and we share the belief in a compassionate model of society. For this reason, in the name of humanity and the future of the human community, we feel called to take part in the current debate on assisted death, to express our opposition to its legalisation under any of its forms, be it assisted suicide or euthanasia. Therefore we put our names to this common statement.

Lisbon, May 16^th, 2018

Portuguese Evangelical Alliance -  Pastor Jorge Humberto, representing the president Pedro Calaim

Portuguese Hindu Community – Mr Kiritkumar Bachu

Islamic Community of Lisbon – Sheikh David Munir

Israeli Community of Lisbon – Rabbi Natan Peres

Catholic Church – Cardinal Patriarch D. Manuel Clemente

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople – Archpriest Ivan Moody

Portuguese Buddhist Union – Diogo Lopes

Portuguese Union of Seventh Day Adventists – Pastor António Carvalho, representing the president, pastor António Amorim

“Dialogue is at the heart of the Christian mystery”

Full transcript of my interview with Fr. Darren Dias, a Canadian Dominican priest and expert in inter-religious dialogue.

What exactly is your involvement in inter-religious and ecumenical dialogue?

I am primarily involved in inter-religious dialogue. I am on the Hindu-Roman Catholic Dialogue of Canada, it's the first type of dialogue the Canadian Bishops have sponsored outside of the monotheistic faiths. There was already dialogue with Jews, a very old dialogue of the Church, and Muslims, and now Hindus.

I also teach at the University of St. Michaels College, in the faculty of Theology, where my area of interest and research is religious pluralism, that is, what is the significance of the simultaneous presence of multiple religious traditions in the World.

Does your Indian background have anything to do with being on that commission?

It may do. I am not a specialist in Hinduism, there are those on the dialogue who are more so, but certainly culturally, because my grand-parents are from Goa, I can relate to Hindus that would come from India also. So that may be one of the reasons. The other reason also is my area of interest.

Because of course that would be very specific and very different from dialogue with Muslims and Jews...

That's right. The first, Ecumenical, would be dialogue with just Christians, and there we have a common faith in the One Lord Jesus Christ, so there is a basis already for Dialogue. With Jews, of course, because Christianity grew out of Judaism, we have a common Scripture, what we call the Old Testament, common notions around God and the divine. We also have a basis for dialogue which is Theological.

Likewise with Muslims we share faith in the One God, we are monotheists, so we have at least that type of basis. What does monotheism call us to live ethically, morally, so there is a basis there.

When you move outside of Christianity and the monotheistic religions, into dialogues with Hindus and Buddhists, its different, because we have less in common theologically, we have less of a shared European and Middle Eastern tradition. So that makes the dialogue a different kind of dialogue. It may start on Human questions, anthropological questions, social challenges. So I think it's true that the non-Christian and non-monotheistic dialogues present a new way of dialogue with the Church.

In terms of the Canadian society, are relations between Hindu and Christian communities generally peaceful and fruitful?

Yes. Canada is a fairly multicultural and multi-religious society, it is predominantly still Christian, at least nominally, and people practice their faith without any sort of problem. It’s a peaceful coexistence.

Religious dialogue with Hindus is very new. We have often gotten together, people of different faiths, on social or political issues, but the religious factor wasn't really entering into the discussion, so it is a new thing. Having said that, there are always, and this is unfortunate and its a problem around the world, incidents of intolerance. We have certainly had an increase of intolerance towards Muslims in the past months, we have had anti-Semitic actions in the country, now they are rare, but still significant. So it still shows that we have a lot of work to do, and that although some might say that tolerance is the lowest common denominator, we still have work to do in the area of tolerance, even a country as open and tolerant and diverse as Canada.

I've heard that it’s not clear cut that Hinduism is a polytheistic faith, that it might not be as simple as that. How would you describe it?

I think that one thing that Christians and certainly Roman Catholics have an advantage with is that when we enter into dialogue we are appointed by the bishops and we can say that we speak from a certain position and we have a shared understanding on these things. To say the same about other religions like Hinduism, and it is the same for Judaism or Islam, there is no central authority, there is no central body to say this is what we believe and this is how we understand ourselves. So our dialogue with Hindus is different because we dialogue with different expressions of Hinduism, and within Hinduism there is such a great diversity of belief, there is such great diversity in the way Hindus would articulate their beliefs, that it would be hard to answer your question, certainly as a Christian, but also within the Hindu tradition there would be many ways of expressing it. Some might say that in fact there is one source of being, and therefore they are not actually polytheists. Even the categories of polytheism and monotheism might be Western, Judeo-Christian categories that Hinduism does not fit into. That is part of the work of dialogue, to reach across those boundaries that make categories difficult to discuss.

No salvation outside the Church? What does this mean exactly?

No Salvation outside the Church is a common adage. It was certainly in the literature of the Roman Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council, but it hadn't been used, even in the 19th Century, very often. We know that in around 1949 there was a famous case with a Boston priest named father Leonard Feeney who interpreted that quite literally. And both the bishop of Boston and also, eventually, the Holy See. The CDF and the Pope were involved with this discussion, which is to say that even in 1949 we did not take this literally.

So after the Second Vatican Council that phrase "Outside the Church, no Salvation", has disappeared from all official literature because, in fact, the Church teaches that there is goodness and truth outside of Christianity, there are seeds of the Word, there is the Divine presence in other religions, so there is indeed salvation outside of the Church.

There are still those in the Church who would say that inter-religious or ecumenical dialogue should essentially be about trying to convert non-Christians and bring the separated Christians back to Rome…

But then it would cease to be dialogue, it would become evangelization, it would become mission, and they are strains in Christianity, which is an evangelizing religion, but even in that evangelizing mission, John Paul II wrote that dialogue is a part of the evangelizing mission of the Church, so that as much as we are called to evangelize, in the sense of explicitly making others Christian, we are also called to dialogue, that is to learn not only about people of other religions, but in our dialogue we learn about God and about who we are.

With all the emphasis on dialogue, however, is there not a crisis in the Church view of evangelization? Certainly some in the Protestant world decry the fact that the Catholic Church seems to have given up on active missions to evangelize non-Christians.

That might be a misperception. Certainly the Church has gone through various phases of its evangelizing mission, the first generation, that is, the Jewish Church that evangelized the gentile world, is different than it was in medieval time when the Church sought to Evangelize Europe, and it is different with the sixteenth Century, with the so-called discoveries, when missionaries would evangelize, along with the colonization, so you have a mission which is linked to colonisation, and that lasted right up until the 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds. So every era there are exigencies which make Missionary activity different. Today the situation is such that we would not evangelize in the same way that we did in a previous generation, that would be suicide for the Church. However, it doesn't mean that the Church ignores its evangelizing mission, but it probably does it and understands it in different ways.

There is no such thing as a forced conversion these days, but there was in the past.

So I think that our Evangelical brothers and sisters would remind us that we still are constituted by a Mission, the reason that there is a church is for the mission. The Gospel mission. There is no doubt. How we witness to the Gospel is different in every era, and I think part of our witnessing today is to enter into dialogue with those who are different from us, and I think that is actually at the heart of what the Gospel is about. So that in the incarnation of Jesus Christ there is a divine and human dialogue, the Word becomes flesh, so that at the very heart of the Christian mystery there is dialogue and for us to be performative of dialogue really behoves us, then. Dialogue helps us to discover the fundamental attributes of what it means to witness to the Gospel.

Again, this might be a misperception, but the idea we have over here is that Canada is an extremely liberal country. In that issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc., which are contentious in the USA, seem to be settled in Canada. Is Canada mission territory?

Well, everyone is in need of mission, in a different way. Everyone is in need of witness to the Gospel.

While the United States professes a separation of Church and State, I think they're religion and State are still fairly linked. Canada does have a pretty healthy separation of Church and State, and there is a real separation.

I think Canada is socially conscious on many issues. So, whether it is socialized medicine, or education which is a public system of post-secondary education, or even refugees, immigration laws, compared to the US, where they have a private medical system and very expensive post-secondary education, so in that sense it is a very socially conscious and collective country, compared to a more individualist consumerist society, in the US. But certainly there is always work to be done in every society.

I think Canada might be a little bit different, because how the Church, or religious groups, would seek to influence public policy, would be through society and the promotion of values, and in the promotion of human or Christian values, people can buy into them even if they are not, lets say, Christian. I think in the USA it is often about influencing law-makers. Its really about the state and how the State controls things. The distinction I am making then is how to evangelize a society through society itself, through culture, or how you might evangelize society through the mechanisms of a state, and I think those are two very different approaches.

Recently the Vatican commission for religious dialogue with the Jews published a document giving weight to the idea that there is no need to evangelize the Jews because they already live in a salvific covenant with God. This is in no way a consolidated idea within the Church, what is your take on this?

That document which came out in December 2015 is an important document. It is a reflection on the past 50 years of relationships with the Jews and in some ways it enumerates the great strides that have been made. It addresses some of the areas which are of ongoing concern and one of the things that it did address is that it said quite explicitly that the Roman Catholic Church no longer has any institutional mission to converting the Jews, and that is based on a scriptural, Pauline notion that God does not take away his promises, and so the promise that he made to the Jewish people remains.

The New Covenant, as we Christians call it, with Jesus Christ, does not abrogate the old covenant with the Jews. So I think that it affirms what is a common theological principle, or idea, that these two covenants are related and intertwined, but that the Jews, because they have an ongoing relationship with God, would not need missionary activity, they would not need to become Christians, so the Church does not have a missionary outreach to the Jews in the way that it had had in the past. For example, there were some religious communities which were founded exclusively for the conversion of Jews.

I actually think that what is very significant in the publication of that document is that a group of Orthodox rabbis also published a document around the same time, I think it came out a few days before, and this was a first in modern history, for the Orthodox Rabbis to really respond to the invitation of the Roman Catholic Church to dialogue, and I think that is really an important step. That our dialogue is a real dialogue, it is not just the Church producing documents, but we see an effect in other religions, which respond to the invitation to enter into some kind of deeper relationship with us.

So in that document, which was a very fine document issued by the dicastery on religious relations with the Jews, I think the more significant thing is that Orthodox rabbis, for the first time, have responded.

Concerning the polemic at Wheaton College about whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God, how do you see this issue?

I am less familiar with the details of the Wheaton situation, though I know about it. So I will answer in two ways.

What I think is very troubling about the Wheaton situation is what is the role of academic freedom? How do theologians have freedom to make statements and to explore research without being disciplined? So one thing is a collegial concern for academic freedom.

I think that Pope John Paul II, in Algeria, when he was on a visit, was quite clear to say to the Muslim Youth that we worship the same God, and we both, all religions, not just Muslims, but all religions, have a temptation to make God in their own image. And one of the things that dialogue does is remind us that we have to avoid the temptation to make out of God something that we want. We see this with extremists, with so-called Muslims, some would say they are not even Muslims, the ISIS people, creating God in their own image. And this leads to intollerance and violence. The alternative to dialogue is violence. So like when children don't have words to express themselves, they express themselves physically, violently, and this is what could happen when we make God into our own image, into something that will further our own agendas, then there is no more room for dialogue and violence ensues.

As a Dominican you are heir to a long tradition of dialogue…

That's right. The order was founded by St. Dominic in the early 13th Century, and Dominic, at the time, faced the great Albigensian heresy in Spain and France, and he observed the way the Cistercians had been trying to evangelize, to bring back these heretics. Now the heresy was a problematic heresy because it denied the very goodness of Human creation and it denied the effect of the resurrection, that is what dualisms do, when they are too spiritually or non-materially oriented, they negate and they denigrate creation, so it was a very problematic heresy.

The Cistercians went out to convert the heretics, to bring them back to the Church, but they were not successful. And one of the things Dominic realised was that some of the criticisms of the heretics, that the Church had become too worldly and they were too involved in power and they were too wealthy and they weren't following the Evangelical precepts, he realized in his dialogue with them that some of the criticisms were true, so he adopted a very simple, austere and poor lifestyle, and then began to enter into conversations with them about theology.

His method was to speak to people, so he spoke sometimes throughout the night to heretics to try and bring them back. So his approach was quite dialogical, we would say today, and it was never heavy handed, and never forced.

An example of how dialogue can also be mission...

That's right.

How well do you know your Goan heritage?

My father was born in Goa, as were my grand-parents, and they moved to Toronto, so I knew my grand-parents, and obviously I knew my father. So I would have heard many stories, and certainly culturally we observed many things, religiously, food, certain customs. But I don't speak the language, which is Concani, because Salazar did not permit the use of the local language. So we lost a lot because of the Portuguese colonization, we lost a lot of the culture, and it was a 450 year colonization. So we have our own Goan culture, but we also have influences of the Portuguese, but beginning in the 40s many people began to leave Goa, so we are a diaspora people, like the Jewish people. There were not a lot of opportunities in Goa in the 40s and 50s and so people began leaving, so there is a culture of the migrant people which is different from the Goa of today, because with the liberation in 1960, and the return to India, the culture changed again.

I have only been there once, and it would have been very different than my parents or my grand-parents' generation, and yet that is a Goa that I don't actually know, because it doesn't actually exist anymore.

But was there a big diaspora in Canada?

There is, yes, in Toronto. There is also a diaspora in London and here in Portugal, of course. I suspect that the Goan population is larger outside of Goa than in Goa.

So there was a community aspect to your experience in Canada?

Yes, there was. There were a few clubs and associations, and there still are. So that is how things are transmitted in Toronto, Montreal and London.