Nearly 500-year-old church seeks help to translate and preserve its baptism, marriage records.
A church in Thane that dates backs to the 16th century is seeking help to translate its old baptism and marriage records from Portuguese into English.
St John the Baptist Church, situated on the bank of Massunda lake, was established in 1581 AD. Church records have been written in English only in the last century. Before that, all church documents were in Portuguese. Even classes at the 150-year-old school attached to the church were initially conducted in Portuguese.
Lately, because of an increase in the demand for copies of old birth and marriage records, the church has felt the need to translate the hundreds of baptism and marriage certificates from Portuguese to English.
Parish priest Father Milton Gonsalves said that people have been asking for copies mainly for two reasons — to trace family roots and to prove ancestral rights in property disputes.
“Also, the government has recently announced Other Backward Class (OBC) status for East Indians (Roman Catholics who are among the original inhabitants of North Konkan). Families who want to prove their East Indian ancestry come for copies of the baptism papers of their ancestors,” said Gonsalves.
Dr Fleur D’Souza, vice principal and head of the history department at St Xavier’s College, who has written about the Thane church’s history, said, “Members of the Indian diaspora abroad, who are interested in tracing their family trees, also come to look at the documents.”
Around two years ago, a student from Mumbai University translated marriage records dating between 1890 and 1900 as part of his college project.
Dr D’Souza, who is also a Thane resident, helped him transfer the records into excel sheets for easy reference. Much of the records dating before 1830 AD have been lost, and the church wants to translate and preserve the surviving papers.
“We want to translate every document that is more than a century old,” said D’Souza. The parish’s website recently carried an appeal for help. Vikas Dilawari, in-charge of the restoration plans, called the church a living page of Christian history in the area, as it is still a living church older than the Taj Mahal!
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