Two years ago, Father Emmanuel Pierre, a Roman Catholic Diocesan Priest, decided that age forty was a good time to take time out from the Diocese and study law.
With help from family and friends, Father Pierre left the San Fernando parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where he had served for nine and a half years, and proceeded to the University of London to become an attorney.
As he enters his final year, Father Pierre came home for what should have been a vacation but could have been seen hustling through Long Circular Mall last Monday morning "blessing some shops" before departing for London, via Tobago, early Tuesday.
Father Pierre, who lives in Our Lady of Hal presbytery in Camden Town, London, must decide "between now and December" whether to be called to the British Bar or come back here and enter the Hugh Wooding Law School for a further two years, after his final exams. Of one thing he is certain: "I am coming back home."
In London, Father Pierre, who admits that he always had an inclination to law "it was my second love really", remains first and foremost a priest, and earns his board and lodge at the presbytery saying Mass and other devotions at Our Lady of Hal.
When he qualifies, Father Pierre's wish is to integrate law with his pastoral training, and will discuss this with the Archbishop, to whom all Diocesan Priests report.
" One area" says this very gentle man "in which I am very interested is the Alternate Dispute Resolution through which you try to get conflicts and other issues settled outside of the court so that they do not clog up the system."
Father Pierre shed some light on an area which had never been very clear to me, that is the difference in orders of priests.
The Holy Ghost Fathers to which Archbishop Pantin belongs, usually live with their peers, report to their head in Europe, are basically involved in mission work, and focus on teaching and education.
The Dominican Order of Preachers, to which priests like Fathers Tom Lawson and Patrick Brennan belong, report to a regional seminary. They are an order of preachers (O.P.) who do retreats, and preaching missions among other things, but basically are supposed to be a preaching order. The Benedictines are a monastic order and do lots of counselling. In Trinidad they live at the Abbey in Mt St Benedict.
These are all religious priests who would normally live with their own religious order, but now live in the parishes because of the lack of Diocesan Priests in Trinidad and Tobago. Diocesan Priests report directly to the Archbishop and live and work in the parishes.
"The Diocesan Priest takes two vows, chastity and obedience, not poverty, so we can own property" explained Father Pierre. Whereas the religious priests take vows of poverty in addition to the other two. "A standing joke is that religious priests take vows of poverty and diocesan priests live it."
Father Pierre spoke of New Yorker Father John Horan, a Carmelite Priest attached to the Maracas Valley parish. Yet another religious order, but says Father Pierre "each order has its own charisma and its own kind of spirituality".
Although the primary calling to the priesthood in Father Pierre's life was for the Eucharist: "celebrating the Eucharist was always central in my life", he remembers the many people who influenced his early life as a student at Presentation College, and gave him guidance.
On leaving school, he studied for the priesthood at St John Vianney Seminary and holds a Bachelor of Arts Theology from the University of the West Indies.
Father Pierre has found his return to the classroom, study and books "very refreshing and very stimulating."