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 po …