Msgr R.F.C. Mascarenhas

Servant of God Msgr Raymond Francis Camillus Mascarenhas, “RFC” to the Bethany Sisters, was born in Shivamogga on 23 January 1875 and became a priest of the Diocese of Mangalore. He built the church at Udyavar while parish priest there (1903–1910) and served Agrar, and in 1914 became the first parish priest of St Sebastian’s, Bendur. There he built the church and opened schools, and on 16 July 1921 he founded the Sisters of the Little Flower of Bethany for the education of poor girls. He was Vicar General of the diocese from 1931 to 1941, was the first to translate the New Testament and the Roman Missal into Konkani, wrote hymns still sung in Mangalore’s churches, was made a Domestic Prelate by Pope Pius XII in 1955, and died on 23 December 1960. He lies buried at Bendur, and his cause for sainthood was opened in 2008.

He is part of our own story too. Our founder, Simon Rasquinha, born in 1910, went to St Sebastian’s school at Bendur while Fr Raymond was its parish priest, and as a boy sang and acted at school and in church. A century after Fr Raymond built the church at Udyavar, our Holy Redeemer went up on the dome of the new one.

As the Bethany Sisters prepared for their centenary in 2021, we made some fifty of his busts and life-size statues for their schools, convents and houses across India, from Bendur, Vamanjoor and Mulki to Goa, Panvel, Allahabad, Ranchi, Haryana and Kalaburagi, and more for his 150th birth anniversary in 2025. For the Bethany Generalate at Bendur we made the statues of its Heritage Park, opened on 28 June 2019: RFC seated among children, Jesus with the children, the Holy Family at work in Nazareth, the Annunciation, Gethsemane and Calvary. We also painted the scenes of his life for the redesigned Mgr Raymond Memorial there, blessed by Bishop Peter Paul Saldanha on 23 December 2021: his parishes of Udyavar, Agrar and Bendur, the founding of Bethany, his years as Vicar General and Domestic Prelate, the Kerala and Karnataka missions, his writing, his three name saints, Raymond, Francis and Camillus, and RFC at prayer.

Ours shows him in a Monsignor’s choir dress, a book in his hand and a chalice worked on his robe. We make him life-size and as a bust, in white, cream, golden beige or pearl silver.