By Henry
C. Mayer '52, '57M.A.
When
he heard the call, George Pope answered. He was a young man, and
when a priest at Notre Dame made his pitch for the Holy Cross
missions in Bengal, Pope took the words to heart. He graduated
from the University in 1954, joined the Congregation of Holy Cross
and arrived in Dhaka in November 1958. He would spend 44 of the
next 46 years of his life in the place now known as Bangladesh.
Tucked beneath northeastern India, Bangladesh is a tragically
flood-prone tropical country. Some 140 million people live there
-- that's equivalent to more than half the U.S. population residing
in an area about the size of Iowa. Only about 200,000 of these
are Catholic; the rest are mostly Muslim and Hindu. Bangladesh,
Pope points out, "is the poorest country on Earth. It experiences
many natural disasters such as killing cyclones, tidal waves and
unbelievable floods. We also have human violence, including the
awful chaos of civil war and heart-wrenching epidemics."
The CSCs have been there for 150 years. In order to get official
recognition from the Vatican, the Congregation's founder, Basil
Anthony Moreau, CSC, agreed to send the first missionaries to
East Bengal in 1853 (a decade after another Holy Cross missionary,
Edward F. Sorin, was sent from France and founded Notre Dame).
Five years later Moreau would write: "I have been blamed by some
for accepting this Mission, on the ground that all the other Congregations
had refused it and that no good can be done there."
But much good has been accomplished. Holy Cross fathers, sisters
and brothers operate two colleges there as well as high schools,
village schools, technical schools and a street academy to give
homeless children a basic education and job training. CSCs staff
parishes and run student hostels, serve at clinics, leprosaria
and hospitals. They have successfully developed vocations from
among the native Bangladeshi. Of the 185 professed Holy Cross
religious now working in Bangladesh only about 25 were born outside
the country, and the seminaries there are full.
The intent these days is not to convert but to serve. In his
first 20 years in Bangladesh George Pope did just that. He traveled
through the jungle, village to village, on foot, horseback and
motorcycle, ministering to Muslim and Christian alike, including
the Garos and other tribes who make up half the Catholic population
of Bangladesh. "Only one-fourth of 1 percent of its people are
Christian, and 90 percent are Muslim," says Pope. "In that situation
you can't make converts. You simply try to meet human needs, and
here these needs are continuous and many."
In 1964, when Muslim refugees sought to drive the Garos from
their lands, burning villages to the ground, the priest tried
to intervene. Clubbed on the head with the butt of a rifle, he
recovered in time to narrowly dodge a bayonet thrust. He spent
several days in captivity before another priest, citing Pope's
U.S. citizenship, got him freed.
Pope returned to the States in 1979, got some needed rest and
worked toward an advanced degree in psychology. But in 1981 he
was back, this time teaching at the National Major Seminary in
Dhaka. For more than 20 years he has helped run the Nevin Medical
Center at Notre Dame College in the Bangladesh capital where the
vast majority of its 13 million people are desperately poor. It
shelters 30 people at a time and treats others afflicted with
tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, malaria and various infections
as well as pregnant women in need of care. Pope's efforts to get
the more serious cases into one of the 15 local government hospitals
often require out-maneuvering the blockades of red tape or the
local labyrinth of bribes.
Pope's personal contacts and his backdoor knowledge of the area's
medical community have helped the priest serve the sick, offer
them prayers and supply them with much-needed medicines that are
often in short supply. His calm way has made him a welcome caregiver
in a place of friction and desperate need. "He was a quiet boy
but by no means an introvert," says Pope's sister Joyce Riggio.
"I have never heard of any mean action that could have been attributed
to him. He was always very observant and sensitive, very sensitive
to the feelings and needs of anyone with whom he came in contact.
He is the kindest person I have ever known."
In November 2003 the priest, who was 74 at the time, was scooting
around on a motorcycle in Dhaka when he crashed his bike. A broken
leg, dislocated shoulder and the rehabilitation for those injuries
put him in the hospital for four months. He became a recipient
of the kind of attention and care he'd been giving to others for
decades.
"You may wonder why I became a missionary," he recently said
during a sermon. "Well, at Notre Dame the more I learned about
Jesus' gift of himself, the more I wanted to return his love by
sharing it with others in the foreign missions." George Pope heard
the call when he was a college student. Now, 50 years later, he
is still answering it.
Henry Mayer, a lifelong friend of Father Pope, lives and writes
in Louisville, Kentucky. The photo of Father Pope is from the
author.
(October 2004)
