Champion of ramponnkars Fr Faleiro dies

Panaji: Jesuit priest Fr Braz Conceicao Faleiro, who fought for the ramponnkars and mine workers in Bicholim, passed away on Sunday after a long battle with illness. Well-known among social action groups in the 1980s, the priest was a common face at morchas and was known to speak out boldly against injustice.
Faleiro even signed up to work with refugees in East Timor. His versatility could be seen in the fact that he had a masters in human resources and was also trained in construction.
“Along with former MLA Mathany Saldanha, he involved himself personally in the struggle of the ramponnkars — the traditional country boat owners — against mechanised trawlers. Here, he played a prominent role; he met the fishermen regularly, heard their grievances, held morchas and spoke boldly against the injustice done to them, which led to his imprisonment in 1983,” said Fr Apollo Cardozo SJ.
Ailing since 2019, the Jesuit priest was living at the Goa Jesuit Province Health Care Centre at Porvorim “One can aptly state that Faleiro was an apostle to the underprivileged and the unorganised. He was one of the first to enter into the social struggle in Goa. Here, the guiding hand of God took him among the mine workers who were exploited,” said Cardozo.
He supervised the construction of Jesuit House, Panaji, the Pedro Arrupe Institute, Raia, and the Institute of Management at Bhubaneswar in Odisha.