We of Our Lady of Good Counsel have been blessed for the eighth
time (in eight years) with a new priest to lead our parish, Fr. Jesuprathap Narichetti (Fr. J.P. for short).
And although he comes from very far away, we know his origins well; he grew up two doors away from his cousin,
our past pastor, Fr. Thomas, and is a cousin of Fr. Joseph! For he is from that tiny village (population 300 families)
in India O.L.G.C. people must by now think of as a fountain of religious, Thimmaraopet, the hometown of no less than
50 nuns and 27 priests. What would we Catholics in Folly Beach have done without this place which none of us have seen
and most of us could not pronounce?
Fr. J.P. himself counts 5 nuns and 4 priests in his extended family. Father was born in 1965 (on St. Patrick’s Day),
one of four children born to a Catholic farmer and his wife, a convert from Hinduism. Both his parents still live in
the village, farming with Father’s married brother, raising cotton, chili, corn, rice and lentils on some three acres.
His younger sister is a nun in a teaching order, St. Anne of Providence.
By the end of the 7th grade in the village’s school Fr. J.P. had decided he wanted to become a priest and entered
a seminary program. That early entry may seem startling to us in America today, but would have been quite normal for
future priests here even 60 years ago.
The young J.P., and his whole village it seems, found their inspiration in the work of Italian missionaries from Milan,
members of the Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions, who staffed their parish church. These missionaries from the
West inspired the men and women of the East by their good example, their spirituality and their simplicity. They were,
in effect, the preparers of the ground from which Thimmaraopet’s vocations sprang.
Father J.P. was ordained in April 1992. Then began five years of parish assignments in his own diocese in southeast
India. His assignments varied greatly; five years as the housemaster/chaplain in a boarding college (at what we would
call the 11th and 12th grades), and six years as a high school principal. At the same time, he was a member of his
diocese priests’ senate and of his bishop’s college of consultors for five years and sat for more than a decade on
its Education Committee. He also served on the diocese equivalent of the Catholic Charities board.
In early 2007, responding to Bishop Baker’s continuing requests for support, his bishop offered Fr. J.P. the chance to
serve the Church in South Carolina.
When he arrived in the state in May, Father was assigned first to St. Michael’s in Garden City for nine months, then
to St. Gregory the Great, Msgr. Laughlin’s home parish in Bluffton, before the diocesan leader heard our pleas for a pastor
who would be with us for an extended period. Fr. J.P. expects to stay with us for three plus years.
Father already had a connection to South Carolina in addition to Fr. Thomas having OLGC as his second home. Fr. J.P.
also has a cousin who immigrated to the US several years ago and is a science teacher in Bishopville’s Lee County Central
High School. She and her husband, a convert from Hinduism, are both ardent Catholics; we may expect to see them in our
church some time. And another member of the family has just completed a degree in Sacramental Theology in Chicago and is
now serving as administrator of a parish in Kansas City!
