The Jesuit Priest
Father Harry Miller S.J.
Father Harry Miller left Louisiana in 1948 as a young Jesuit assigned to the mission in Batticaloa. Travelling by train from New Orleans and by ship from New York to Colombo, he arrived with his close friend, Father Eugene Hebert, as part of a cohort of American Jesuits sent to eastern Sri Lanka following earlier French, Belgian and Italian missions. Jesuits, he would say, did not come for a short term. It was for life.
Batticaloa became his primary home for more than six decades. He taught at St Michael’s College and later helped establish the Council of Religions and the Batticaloa Peace Committee. During the war years, he assisted in documenting thousands of cases of disappearance. In 1990, Father Hebert himself disappeared.
In 2009, Miller returned briefly to New Orleans, unsure whether he would return to Sri Lanka. But he soon realised that his home remained in Batticaloa, among the people who still knew him. How he would be remembered mattered less to him than the community he had served.
In 2009, Miller returned briefly to New Orleans. Many of those he had known were gone. He realised then that his life had become inseparable from Batticaloa. When he returned, his office had already been cleared; books and personal effects redistributed. His presence, like the mission itself, had long since merged with the town’s memory.
We met in the attic of St Michael’s College in Batticaloa. Father Miller spoke in a Louisiana accent softened by decades in eastern Sri Lanka. “We didn’t volunteer for a few weeks, a month or a year. It was for life,” he said, describing the Jesuit understanding of mission.
The attic windows were open. Crows circled outside, calling intermittently. I attempted to chase them away; he seemed amused. “They too are part of the Batticaloan story,” he remarked.
Jesuit presence in eastern Sri Lanka had shifted over time. French missionaries had arrived earlier; Belgian and Italian clergy followed. In the 1930s the Vatican requested assistance from American Jesuits, particularly from French Louisiana. “When the Pope has his back to the wall, he calls upon the Jesuits,” Miller said, referring to the order’s vow of obedience to the Holy Father.
He left Louisiana as a student priest in 1948, travelling with Father Eugene Hebert to the Jesuit mission in Batticaloa. What followed were decades as educator and parish priest. During the conflict, he participated in documenting thousands of disappearances. In 1990, Hebert himself disappeared.
In 2009 Miller returned to New Orleans, uncertain whether he would come back. Many of his contemporaries had died. When he returned again to Batticaloa, his office had been cleared; books, photographs and personal objects redistributed. The mission continued without ceremony. “I don’t really care what people say about me anymore,” he told me later on the phone. “But I’ll take a look.”
Batticoloa
May 22, 2012
Transcript and translations
Language
Subjects discussed
I feel at home only here
Well, I had volunteered for it years before and I had been reading the stories of this mission since I was a high school boy. And so because there were…publications were coming back, I knew what it was. And when they called for volunteers there…I think probably a fairly large number of the province did volunteer. But then it was up to them to choose the volunteers they wanted. There were four volunteers with us. Two priests came and the two of us who were still in our studies came.
Gene Herbert and I…Father Herbert and I got on the train in New Orleans. Our families saw us off at the Union Station. We travelled together by train to New York. We were met there. We stayed there, the few days we had to stay.
The trip over was…just we were on the ship. There were some Protestant missionaries coming over also, maybe four or five families of them. They had kids. And the kids hung around the Jesuits for some reason. We don’t know… One of our guys knew how to fly kites. Another one had set up on one of the decks. He got a big tarpaulin from down, stacked it up and made a small swimming pool on the deck. And so the kids hung around with the Jesuits. I think the Protestant missionaries were a little upset with that. But anyway, they grouped around the Jesuits. So we had fun with them.
We didn’t volunteer for six weeks, or a month or a year. They said, we need missionaries. And there were already American missionaries here who had been here since the ‘30s. Now they’re sending us over in the ‘50s…er the ‘40s. And these had been here already 10, 15 years. And the new bishop of the place was an American. So there was every indication that we would spend the rest of our lives here.
Over the years, I went back for an occasional visit. I did not go home for deaths…the way we were travelling in those days, a person dies, they would be buried in a week or so. I would not even be home. I went home for none of the deaths in my family. I guess I went back about five or six times in my 60 years I was here.
I feel at home only here. Everything I had been doing over these years was here. And I had learned enough Tamil to be able to work in the parishes. I had been parish priest at two or three different churches over the course of time. I wasn’t good at it, but I could stand up there on Sunday morning and talk to them about the gospel… of the day, a few simple things that needed to be said in Tamil. So that was done in the ‘70s I think, and I was rector here until the ‘70s. Then by the time I moved out, I had to learn Tamil for all of those elements, and I managed it somehow or other.
I am at home. I feel at home. I am at home. There’s no other place that I am at home is Batticoloa. Sixty-four years I’ve been in Batticoloa or and it is home. There’s no other places home. My family is mostly dead. Two sisters are living. But my older sisters, older brothers, mother, father, all the people I might have known, they’re gone. The house that we lived in is gone. The place where we stayed, the school that I went to has completely changed. It’s a different place now and so on. No, that is not home to me. This is home. I know Batticoloa better than many Batticolonians do.
I received something from Colombo the other day, from a family now in Colombo, about a relative who used to be here, who died abroad. And they were contacting me because he is from our area. They wanted me as a priest to say masses for his soul in Batticoloa, where he was. And I’m looked upon by them as typical of Batticoloa. So they contacted me to get masses said for him in Batticoloa, say part of it.
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