80%: poll prayer helped Catholics buck trend

According to Diago Almeida,president,Poona Catholic Association,the voting percentage amongst Catholics in the city was at least 80 per cent this time.

“I can say this for sure as,being a member of the Consumer Forum,I was actively involved in the process of getting voters registered and monitoring the turnout,” said Almeida.

He added that the community’s voting percentage in 2004 was 45 per cent and attributed the turnaround to the novel move by the Poona Diocese that brought out an ‘election prayer’ a month before polls in a bid to motivate the community to vote.

As reported by The Indian Express on March 24,all 37 churches under the Poona Diocese had started reciting the ‘election prayer’ every Sunday after it was printed and handed out to all the churches by the Diocese.

While Father Malcolm Sequeira,pastor of St Patricks’s Cathedral and Father Wilfred of Don Bosco scripted the prayer,it was sent out with the approval of Father Valerian D’Souza,the then Bishop of the Diocese.

“In fact,after the report appeared,churches in Nashik,Mumbai,Vasai and even some from Gujarat also called and asked us to send the prayer for their churches too. We also had it translated into Marathi. So the impact was wider. As far as my parish is concerned I can confidently say that the percentage was at least 70 and it was generally the same or more at other parishes in the city,” said Father Malcolm Sequeira,also the Poona Diocese spokesperson.

Sister Ranjana,assistant novice mistress of Sisters of Our Lady of Fatima said that out of the 42 nuns in their convent,40 went voted on April 23. The two who didn’t were out of town. “We had been reciting the prayer in our church and knew it was our duty to vote,” she said.

While Father Wilfred said the prayer was a means to remind people of their duty to the country and God,Sequeira felt that the recitation of the prayer every Sunday drove home the message. “There were some who would recite it everyday and had learnt it by heart,” he said admitting that voting thus became akin to a religious responsibility for many. Vineet Pinto,a 22-year-old engineer with Synergy said though he would have voted anyhow,this being his first time,the prayer in the church certainly firmed his resolve to do so.

Almeida feels that the turnout would have been near 100 per cent had it not been for the usual names missing from the voter list. “I had personally got 50 names registered that were nowhere to be found on the polling day,” he said.

Significantly,the prayer called upon the Catholics to elect a secular government and vote for candidates committed to “human rights,liberty,equality and justice.” Seqeira added that the community has gone through a rough time of late and these elections are very crucial for them in that context. According to Almeida there are 65,000 Catholic families in Pune,taking the total population to well over a lakh.