Fr Stany Coelho, had the singular distinction of being the leader of the pioneering team of the Nagaland Mission. His younger brother Denis joined the same Karnataka Province while the youngest John opted to join the Jamshedpur Province. Their sibling Jesuine Marie, and another sibling Sr Therese Marie were CSST Sisters, who survived all the three brothers. There were also several other siblings who married and raised families. Their parents, Titus and Josephine, were very devout persons. He was born (8 Nov 1920) and brought up in the shadow of St Aloysius College, and naturally took active part in all the spiritual academic and cultural activities of the School and College. Their house was where the Ladies‘ Hostel, next to the Primary Department of SAC now stands.
After his graduation at St Aloysius, Stany joined the novitiate at Calicut on 30 June 1941, was ordained at DNC, Pune on 24 March 1954. A pleasant person, a fertile mind with creative ideas, majestic in walk, soft spoken, of subtle humour. He inspired dignity and respect. His 3 years of regency, 4 years of teaching career and 12 of Headmastership were all at St Aloysius. He was of a practical bent of mind; as Headmaster he introduced job-oriented courses at SAC. He started the St Aloysius press in a part of the white building, gave opportunities to desiring students to learn typesetting. He took special interest in the catechism of students. He promoted the translation of the Acts and the Pauline Letters into Konkani and got these books printed at the school press. He was a lover of fishes and birds; quite a few love birds were in a cage and fishes in a fish tank at the entrance of the school.
All who came to know him held him in high esteem. The school staff members were proud to have him as their HM, and the students revered him. He showed the same welcome and at the same time a certain reserve towards the rich and the poor alike. There was a lot of originality in him. He was keen on innovation, not change just for the sake of change, but with a keen eye for improvement, whether as HM in the School or as Minister of the House. A man of principle, uncompromising when action had to be taken: he would remove from the Jesuit staff an intimate friend of his, since Stany found him negligent in his school task.
He could dream big and work at realizing the dreams. With a desire to offer the children of the rich elite of Mangalore special education with a CBSE school, he started a parallel unit at SAC. He had perhaps hoped that indirectly that would support the education of the poor. But it did not meet with Superiors’ approval, as that was the time when the Society of Jesus had made its preferential option for the poor. So it had to be closed down, and the students merged with the general category.
But for the creative mind of Fr Stany, when one door was closed, another seemed to open itself. A call came from the North East to the Jesuits of Karnataka to take up that region for all round development. He was sent as one of the pioneers of the Nagaland Mission. It gave full scope to his vision of practical education in his project at Eden Gardens, to help talented children to build self-education based on self-help. Besides the Loyola School modeled on a CBSE school at Jakhama, the teachers’ training school at Phesama to prepare local teachers for Nagaland meant ample scope for Fr Stany’s creativity.
Alongside establishing these educational institutions, he was the Headmaster successively of Loyola School Jakhama (1971-76), St Joseph’s School, Viswema (1976-79), Sacred Heart School Khuzama and St Xavier School, Kidima (1979-89). He handed over the Viswema School to the Bethany Sisters. These schools, boarding houses and mission works were quite different from those in the South, but appropriate to the needs of the area, so much in line with Decree 4 of GC 32 even before it was a reality. His vision for a new system of education could finally come to fruition. The crowning glory was the Eden Gardens, which was his own personal challenge, looking after orphans and children from broken homes, the real marginalized of Naga society. It would be here that Fr Stany would receive his final call from the master he served so faithfully and relentlessly.
The beautiful thing about Eden Gardens is that he had groomed his successor, Br (now Fr) Raymond D’Souza, so well that he could carry on the work with no less dedication and no less efficacy, so much so, the Government of Nagaland honoured him with a gold medal for his selfless service to these children. The call of GC 32, to opt for the poor, touched a raw nerve in him. “All my life the `haves’ have benefitted from my work; now at least let me go to the ‘have-nots’.” That was the key to the founding of the Eden Gardens, a home on the border of Nagaland and Manipur for the neglected unloved, uncared for children of Nagaland and Manipur. For their sake he begged and borrowed, but also made funds grow through the dairy, the piggery and the poultry.
Fr Stany was really a man of vision. He perceived that the only way to remove ignorance, poverty and sickness from among the Nagas was to educate them. The various schools he started are witnesses to this. Brick by brick he built them. Money wasn’t easy to come by. Trusting in Providence, as one institution was getting ready, he ventured into a new one. The people of Southern Angami will remain ever grateful to him for it.
He realized that if the education had to take root in the local culture, the sons of the soil would have to get into the teaching profession. This conviction led him to start the St Paul’s Institute of Education. And he felt that if Naga youth had to be at par with the rest of the nation, then higher education was a must. That was the origin of his idea of St Joseph’s College at Jakhama.
His base was in Southern Angami, true; but the whole of Nagaland was his field of action. The laity used to come to him for guidance, for inspiration. The leaders of various diocesan associations depended on him. The Education Dept. of Nagaland depended on him for ideas. The Nagaland Board of School Education was his brain child and he nurtured it till the end. In him all these have lost a father, a faithful friend, a guide and a teacher.
It was not all smooth sailing for Fr Stany: he met with criticism, misunderstanding; but he lived with it. He took it well, acknowledging its worth when due. Negative comments did not dampen his spirit. He worked hard and wanted others too to do so. People said he was a hard man to live with; but they admired his undaunted courage, wide vision and store of ideas. All along his sense of humour kept him buoyant. His sense of Providence made him look carefree. Problems worried him, but they did not stifle his generosity and magnanimity.
An unexpected phone call from Kohima in the evening of 14 November 1990 brought the sad news of Fr Stany Coelho’s death in the Army Hospital at Jakhama at 3.14, of a massive heart attack. Six months earlier he had been induced to come to Bangalore for medical treatment after he had a sudden blackout while attending a meeting in the Bishop’s House, Dimapur. The doctors at St Philomena’s operated upon him for prostate trouble. For the rest he was declared completely fit. So he went back to his beloved Nagaland with a clean chit, brimming with new ideas and plans.
On 6 Nov. Stanyhad breathing trouble and was found shivering. The doctors at Khuzama gave him some immediate medical relief. But at about 1 a.m. he began to sweat and became numb in his limbs. The doctor said that his BP was normal for a man of his age, but his heart beat was erratic. Next morning he was moved to the Army Hospital and was admitted to ICU. The end came early morning on 14 November, the day after his patronal feast. He was just 70, and 6 months and 6 days. He had just six months to go for his Golden Jubilee as a Jesuit.
He was a great man, no doubt, one with great ideas. It’s possible that at times he was not very practical; his vision of the future might have forced him to dream impossible dreams and to undertake impossible things. Often he used to say, ‘some of our plans get fulfilled in the eternal plan of God, whenever we sacrifice them. Deep faith of a great Jesuit! His dream of making Nagaland ‘a land of peace, plenty and prosperity’ is the task of his confreres he left behind. They are confident of making a success of it, for they know for sure that they have a powerful intercessor in him in heaven.
Bishop A. Abraham SDB of Kohima, in his funeral oration, stressed the optimism of Fr Stany and said that the word ‘No’ seldom came from him when a request was made to him. His dictionary did not contain the word ‘impossible’. Everything was possible to him, for he trusted in a Master for whom “Nothing is impossible”.
- By Fr Richard Sequeira, SJ
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