Amantha Perera: How the Virgin Mary Survived Sri Lanka's Civil War
For Catholics around the world, Aug. 15 is among the holiest of feast days. It marks the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, when the mother of Jesus is believed to have been physically taken into heaven after death so that her body would not suffer earthly decay. For the Catholics of Sri Lanka, Aug. 15 this year marked a similar miracle: the survival of a 500-year-old statue of the Virgin, through the fiery tumult of a quarter-century of civil war, which was re-ensconced in a jungle church that was once again safe to travel to.
The voice coming through the public-address system was familiar yet strange. I had not heard it in at least 27 years, not since I had traveled to the sacred Madhu Shrine in northern Sri Lanka in August 1982 when I was a child and on pilgrimage with my family: "Aandavane" ("Oh, Holy Lord" in Tamil), "Aandavane." The words spread through the church compound where half a million others had made the same journey to see Madhu Matha, the Mother of Madhu, in her sacred precincts.
For 25 years, Madhu, some 185 miles (300 km) from the capital of Colombo, remained well within the battlegrounds of the civil war between the predominantly Sinhalese government and the separatist Tamil Tigers. It was not until April 2008 that the military gained full control of the shrine; the Tigers, who demanded a separate state for ethnic Tamils on the island nation, were finally crushed in May 2009.
Few made the pilgrimage amid the war, and those who did undertook the journey mostly during lulls in fighting. "We came, we worshipped, we left — that was it, we never wanted to stay back," says Lesley Fernando, who is Sinhalese and was brave enough to visit the shrine during the fragile truces in the war. (About 7% of Sri Lanka's population is Catholic, with adherents among both of the nation's major ethnicities: the Sinhalese, who are otherwise mostly Buddhist, and the Tamils, who are predominantly Hindu.) But never have pilgrims been seen in such numbers as they were last week. Numbering some 500,000, they still had to go through several security checkpoints to reach the shrine, though each stop was a formality compared to those during the stringent heights of the civil war.
There was, however, no escaping the after-effects of the war on the road to Madhu. There were armed personnel on either side of the road, bunkers with dugouts manned by soldiers, occasionally a bomb-damaged building. The railroad that ran parallel to the trunk road had been reduced to a long mound of earth, as if it were the trail left by some giant worm. The iron tracks had long been removed to construct the many bunkers.
Pilgrims also passed through camps where some of the more than 280,000 people who were displaced by the last phase of the fighting now live. At the turnoff to the shrine, pilgrims were strictly warned not to stop on the side of the road till they reached the church compound. They were told that the jungles on the sides of the road were still littered with mines and other ordnance; red skull-and-crossbones signs drove the message home. Still, the pilgrims arrived in the tens of thousands, in vans, buses, trucks, public transport, an old British double-decker bus, some in tuk-tuks, the three-wheeler rickshaws that traverse the island. At the shrine, the faint but constant hum of prayers and hymns rose above the rustling of pilgrims' feet. Large piles of slippers, sandals and an assortment of shoes of every nature accumulated by the doors outside the church. Families prayed together, others lined up in a long queue that slowly snaked around the church to get a brief moment to touch the altar where the venerated statue is kept. I saw four young girls kneel and walk the entire length of the church on their knees to pray at the altar.
Though the main church has survived almost unscathed, the side church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on its right still bears the marks of years of war. Its roof was blown off and at the end is a ruined statue of Jesus Christ, destroyed by something that hit the building. Worshippers have tied coins to the statue as part of their vows. You can see the sides of its pedestal pockmarked with shrapnel.
The last year of the civil war was particularly perilous for the shrine. The military had begun a multipronged advance into the Tiger-controlled area in late 2007, and Madhu was about six miles (10 km) north of the line. Earlier that year, 10,000 people were still taking refuge in the church compound, believing the Virgin would protect them. But by February 2008, recalls the Rev. S. Emilianuspillai, then caretaker of the shrine, it was clear that the shrine itself was in danger — and part of the war. On April 3, 2008, fighting had isolated 17 people at the shrine, including four priests and three nuns. Emilianuspillai tells TIME that the Tigers, breaking an agreement not to enter the compound, had moved mortar launchers into church property and started firing. Says Emilianuspillai: "I went into the shrine and hid there. The shelling went on for hours."...
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The voice coming through the public-address system was familiar yet strange. I had not heard it in at least 27 years, not since I had traveled to the sacred Madhu Shrine in northern Sri Lanka in August 1982 when I was a child and on pilgrimage with my family: "Aandavane" ("Oh, Holy Lord" in Tamil), "Aandavane." The words spread through the church compound where half a million others had made the same journey to see Madhu Matha, the Mother of Madhu, in her sacred precincts.
For 25 years, Madhu, some 185 miles (300 km) from the capital of Colombo, remained well within the battlegrounds of the civil war between the predominantly Sinhalese government and the separatist Tamil Tigers. It was not until April 2008 that the military gained full control of the shrine; the Tigers, who demanded a separate state for ethnic Tamils on the island nation, were finally crushed in May 2009.
Few made the pilgrimage amid the war, and those who did undertook the journey mostly during lulls in fighting. "We came, we worshipped, we left — that was it, we never wanted to stay back," says Lesley Fernando, who is Sinhalese and was brave enough to visit the shrine during the fragile truces in the war. (About 7% of Sri Lanka's population is Catholic, with adherents among both of the nation's major ethnicities: the Sinhalese, who are otherwise mostly Buddhist, and the Tamils, who are predominantly Hindu.) But never have pilgrims been seen in such numbers as they were last week. Numbering some 500,000, they still had to go through several security checkpoints to reach the shrine, though each stop was a formality compared to those during the stringent heights of the civil war.
There was, however, no escaping the after-effects of the war on the road to Madhu. There were armed personnel on either side of the road, bunkers with dugouts manned by soldiers, occasionally a bomb-damaged building. The railroad that ran parallel to the trunk road had been reduced to a long mound of earth, as if it were the trail left by some giant worm. The iron tracks had long been removed to construct the many bunkers.
Pilgrims also passed through camps where some of the more than 280,000 people who were displaced by the last phase of the fighting now live. At the turnoff to the shrine, pilgrims were strictly warned not to stop on the side of the road till they reached the church compound. They were told that the jungles on the sides of the road were still littered with mines and other ordnance; red skull-and-crossbones signs drove the message home. Still, the pilgrims arrived in the tens of thousands, in vans, buses, trucks, public transport, an old British double-decker bus, some in tuk-tuks, the three-wheeler rickshaws that traverse the island. At the shrine, the faint but constant hum of prayers and hymns rose above the rustling of pilgrims' feet. Large piles of slippers, sandals and an assortment of shoes of every nature accumulated by the doors outside the church. Families prayed together, others lined up in a long queue that slowly snaked around the church to get a brief moment to touch the altar where the venerated statue is kept. I saw four young girls kneel and walk the entire length of the church on their knees to pray at the altar.
Though the main church has survived almost unscathed, the side church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on its right still bears the marks of years of war. Its roof was blown off and at the end is a ruined statue of Jesus Christ, destroyed by something that hit the building. Worshippers have tied coins to the statue as part of their vows. You can see the sides of its pedestal pockmarked with shrapnel.
The last year of the civil war was particularly perilous for the shrine. The military had begun a multipronged advance into the Tiger-controlled area in late 2007, and Madhu was about six miles (10 km) north of the line. Earlier that year, 10,000 people were still taking refuge in the church compound, believing the Virgin would protect them. But by February 2008, recalls the Rev. S. Emilianuspillai, then caretaker of the shrine, it was clear that the shrine itself was in danger — and part of the war. On April 3, 2008, fighting had isolated 17 people at the shrine, including four priests and three nuns. Emilianuspillai tells TIME that the Tigers, breaking an agreement not to enter the compound, had moved mortar launchers into church property and started firing. Says Emilianuspillai: "I went into the shrine and hid there. The shelling went on for hours."...