Jesuit Father P D Mathew, the first Catholic priest to become a lawyer in India, has recently celebrated the golden jubilee of his religious life as a Jesuit. His is an inspiring story of empowering thousands of our citizens through his mission of legal aid.
Father Mathew says a short stay with a group of bonded labourers in early 1960s made a drastic change in his life. During his training to become a Jesuit priest, his superiors had asked him to study chemistry so that he could become a teacher in their college in Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat.
But the stay with the tribals in the Bharuch district of Gujarat during 1962-1965, helped him realize the way they were oppressed by powerful people. “Their cries for human rights and justice challenged me as a priest to respond to them in an effective way,” the lawyer priest recalled.
According to him, becoming a lawyer as “a vocation with his choice vocation” where his main mission was to listen to the plight of the simple and suffering people.
“It was in that situation that I first thought of studying law in order to liberate them from the bonded system prevalent at that time in Gujarat. My later studies in social work at the M S University, Baroda, (passed with distinction and gold medal) also inspired me to take up the legal profession as a means of liberating the oppressed people.”
Father Mathew says not all supported his idea of becoming a lawyer. His Jesuit superiors and companions considered law as a “lier’s profession” of those exploiting the poor litigants, who helplessly seek justice through courts. “As a result, no priest in India ever thought of studying civil laws to take up the legal profession as a mission to serve the poor,” he explained. “Consequently I struggled a lot to get permission from my superiors to acquire a degree in law. After a year-long dialogue with my superiors… I got the LL.B. degree with distinction and gold medal which prompted the university authorities to ask me to continue my law studies to take an LL.M. degree and to teach in the Law Faculty of the University.”