From southern India to Canada’s far north: New archbishop serves Indigenous Catholics

The Rev. Susai Jesu, recently named archbishop of Keewatin-Le Pas, gives an interview at the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples where he was once pastor, on Wednesday, July 20, 2022, in Edmonton, Alberta. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

As a teenager in southern India, Susai Jesu led 4:30 a.m. prayer services in his small Catholic village before the farmers went into the fields. He directed the choir, helped at Mass and soon began training for the priesthood.

Little did he know that this dedication would take him halfway around the world on a vast cross-cultural journey — ministering among Canada’s Indigenous Catholics, learning their language, culture and historical traumas. He hosted Pope Francis at his Edmonton parish when the late pontiff visited Canada in 2022 to apologize for the Catholic Church’s collaboration with the “catastrophic” system of Indigenous residential schools.

And as of Jan. 26, Jesu is now an archbishop for northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. He’ll oversee ministry to about 49,000 Catholics, mostly Indigenous, dispersed across a region larger than Texas.

In a ceremony punctuated by traditional drumming — as well as songs and prayers in an unusual combination of Cree, Dene, English, French, Oji-Cree and his native Tamil — Jesu was consecrated archbishop of Keewatin-Le Pas.

Jesu’s first order of business is simply to spend time with the people. At each of the far-flung parishes he visits, he plans not only to preside at worship but to be “physically present with them,” he said in an interview. He hopes to build trust over time in a population that includes many loyal Catholics but also many who remain wounded and alienated from the church.

“For the first year, let us build a relationship,” said Jesu, 54, who was appointed archbishop by Francis’ successor, Leo XIV, in November. “With all those residential schools (and their legacy), what kind of Jesus are we giving today?”

Lessons learned on building connections and trust

The need for relationship building is a lesson he learned early in India, when he witnessed the disappointment of parishioners during the infrequent times when a priest visited their remote village but left soon after Mass.

“I told myself, if I ever become a priest, I will always be available to the people,” Jesu recalled. “Not only during the Mass, but after the Mass, greeting them before they go home, (asking) do they need anything, any special prayers?”

Fernie Marty, one of Jesu’s parishioners in Edmonton, recalled how the priest enthusiastically learned the Cree language and cultural practices, joining Marty on excursions to pick sage, sweetgrass and other traditional medicinal plants.

“He went above and beyond what I thought any normal priest would do,” said Marty, an elder at Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples, a parish that incorporates Indigenous practices. After a devastating fire, Jesu oversaw the church’s reconstruction — with such features as a tepee-like structure over the altar and images of Jesus with Indigenous features — in time for Pope Francis’ visit.

Jesu is the first Indian-born bishop to oversee a diocese of North America that isn’t primarily serving the Indian diaspora.

He was born in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu. His mother regularly took him to church, mornings and evenings.

“She not only prayed for me to become a good priest but also showed me the way,” he said.

As a teenager, he joined a religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and was ordained a priest in 2000. He worked for years among an Indigenous group in northern India, which he said helped prepare him for his later transfer to Canada in 2007.

Surviving winter driving and a near-death experience

After months of training and acculturation in Canada, he was assigned to remote parishes in Saskatchewan.

He lacked experience in winter driving, and one day his car rolled over three times, fell into a river and began to sink. “By God’s grace, I pressed the button. I came out of the car,” he recalled later. “I was experiencing my own death.”

He ran for help and eventually flagged down a car. “God saved me to continue my ministry.”

That didn’t deter his eagerness to travel. With the help of a pilot, he visited parishes throughout the vast Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas — unknowingly preparing for his future appointment as archbishop.

It was a somber ministry in many ways as he responded to chronic problems of drug and alcohol abuse and suicide.

“I really enjoyed my ministry of being there, but the amount of alcohol, drugs, and all these things, it’s pretty sad,” he recalled. He often got phone calls asking, “Please come to the health center, there’s a stabbing there, there’s a suicide here, there’s an accident due to alcohol.”

He ached for “the children who are walking on the street aimlessly, not knowing who they are,” he said.

Jesu joined local elders in conducting healing workshops, and he went on to get a master’s in counseling and spirituality in Ottawa. “I felt I needed special skills to tell them how good they are before the eyes of God,” he said.

Path from parish priest to archbishop

He later became pastor of Sacred Heart, working among Edmonton’s urban Indigenous population and often ministering to homeless people.

“My prayer every day was, ‘Lord, do not make my heart hard-hearted,’” said Jesu, speaking in fluent, Tamil-accented English.

In 2022, Pope Francis visited Sacred Heart, to a backdrop of traditional singing and drums. It followed Francis’ apology for Catholic complicity in the residential-school system, in which children were removed from their families and severed from their cultural and spiritual traditions.

Many trace multi-generational traumas, substance abuse, broken homes and suicides to the schools’ legacy. Reactions to the apology were mixed in Canada, though Jesu said many parishioners were deeply moved and accepted it.

Jesu served in Edmonton for eight years, and after a brief posting at a pilgrimage shrine, he received the appointment as archbishop in late 2025.

Even though he’s a newcomer to Canada, Jesu recognizes he represents the church and its long, checkered legacy. Often he doesn’t wear his clerical collar in informal settings. “The trigger is still there,” he said.

For those still estranged from the church, he hopes “to be with them and to help them see how can we work together on this,” he said. “How much can I accompany in your suffering?”

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Peter Smith, The Associated Press