Konkani Day Flag Hoisting ceremony

News by Gordon D’Almeida and Jasmine Vas
Pics by Leslie D’Souza

Church of St Vincent Ferrer Valencia is celebrating its 27th Konkani day on Aug 18, 2019. As a preparation for this program 6.30am mass was celebrated by Parish Priest Fr James D’Souza and Fr William Barrocas con-celebrated.

Konkani flag was hoisted in the morning at 7.45am after the 6.30am mass . The special guest for this program was Fr Alwyn Serrao, Principal of Padua College of Management Mangalore. After hoisting the flag a beautiful message was conveyed by Fr Serrao. He mentioned “India has one of the highest number of languages in the world. They are divided into 3 categories i.e scheduled language, official language, classical language. Offical language is being used by the government for official purposes. India does not have any official language as such. But English and Hindi are the official languages of India. Scheduled language are prescribed by the state for their offical purposes. Among the scheduled languages Konkani is one of them. Further stressing on the importance people can opt to write Competitive exams such as IAS, IFS etc in Konkani. As it is our mother tongue there is need to love the language. If we don’t preserve the culture and the importance, the language will be destroyed in the community. There is a need to protect our language and create more awareness of our mother tongue. For example Kodava language of Coorg is an endangered language, like how the kodava language has been neglected the same way Konkani also can be a endangered language. Hoisting the Konkani flag is a mark of respect to our community. He also appreciated the program that was conducted and wished everyone good luck for the evening function”.