Oblate played key role in reconciliation: U.S. priest drew on basketball, teatime in Tissa negotiations

National Catholic Reporter, Feb 20, 1998 by Pamela Schaeffer

Wednesday, the second-to-last day of negotiations "was the hardest," Singer said. "It came down to crunch time. This is where you could really see the value of laptops, faxes and phones. Without those, we could not have done it."

At that point, the 10 Oblates had faced each other around a conference table at the order's provincial headquarters in Sri Lanka for long days, usually beginning when Balasuriya arrived 15 to 20 minutes late -- "on Sri Lankan time," Singer said, referring to the casual approach to punctuality in the culture -- sometime after 9 a.m. The visiting Oblates had already celebrated Mass before the excommunicated Balasuriya arrived.

The participating Oblates included Sri Lankan theologians invited by Balasuriya who both supported and challenged him on various points. "We told him he could invite one or two. He brought three," Singer said, chuckling. "Fortunately, all were outstanding -- intelligent and honest." Singer said he had found Balasuriya to be "an intriguing personality ... very intense. I liked him. We kind of hit it off," Singer said.

Although the two mean had never met before, both men have been Oblates for decades -- Sri Lanka native Balasuriya, for 51 years, 44 of them a priest; St. Louis native Singer, for 46 years, 40 of them a priest. The order, founded in 19th-century France, has about 5,000 members worldwide, including 500 in the United States and 600 in Asia.

Singer is vicar provincial for the order's central U.S. province in Minneapolis. He previously served as director of Our Lady of the Snows, the order's largest U.S. presence, based in Belleville, Ill. The site, near St. Louis, includes a large church, a hotel and restaurant and claims a million visitors a year.

Negotiations began Saturday evening, Jan. 10. On Sunday, Balasuriya requested time out to attend a ceremony in honor of St. Sebastian. It was held at a Catholic shrine, unusual in Sri Lanka, where Buddhists predominate and Christians are a mere 7 to 8 percent of the population. Singer said Balasuriya also took him to visit what he described as a "tough slum" bordering the provincial house where 400 families, 2,000 people in all, share 71 water spigots and 17 toilets. "I'll never forget it." Singer said.

Balasuriya and others contend that Vatican officials misunderstanding the Asian culture. On Feb. 5, the Geneva-based International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs-Pax Romana, echoing Balasuriya's remarks at Call to Action in Detroit in November, called for broader representation from Africa and Asia in the Vatican.

As a motif for negotiations, Singer proposed the Prayer of St. Francis: "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love, where there is injury, pardon, where there is doubt, faith ... ."

"We meditatively prayed a line, then paused," Singer said. "We came back to that prayer several times."

As facilitator, Singer established one primary rule: no interruption, none, when someone was speaking. At times, Balasuriya would talk for a half hour or so. "What he did," Singer said, "was to walk us through a lot of his points," suggesting that a lot of the concerns "were a lot more about semantics than theology. He tried to clarify those.