Church where wild elephants roamed

by W.T.A. Leslie FERNANDO

On Sunday August 24, the lively Catholic community at Hiripokuna will celebrate the 85th anniversary of their church dedicated to St. Helen. Hiripokuna is a hamlet three miles off Bingiriya on the outskirts of Deduru Oya range, all surrounded by Buddhist villages.

Hiripokuna is one of the two churches dedicated to St. Helen in Sri Lanka, whose name is written in gold letters in the annals of the Catholic Church as the queen who discovered the Holy Croos many centuries after the crucifixion of Christ. She was also the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, during whose reign the Roman Empire embraced Christianity.

In the beginning of the 20th century, Warnakulasuriya Kalugamage Zackarius Fernando of Wennappauwa who was better known as ‘Jagarius Annavi’ bought some lands in the range of Deduru Oya and cultivated them. He found the soil fertile and within a few years he became the proud owner of more than one thousand acres of coconut.

He also looked after the spiritual needs of the original families from Wennappuwa who settled down in the village and whenever possible got down a priest for Sunday Mass to his estate bungalow.

When his wife Helena once visited the estate she saw the Catholics assembled at the estate bungalow on a Sunday for mass. She requested the husband to build a church for them. Jagarius Annavi began to build the present church in 1920 and completed it in 1923.

The church was designed by one of his sons the late Charles Fernando.

He dedicated the church to St. Helen, the patron saint of his beloved wife who gave every encouragement and assistance to him in all his endeavours. In the land in which the church was built there was a pond called Hiripokuna and people began to call the church Hiripokuna church. Later the whole village came to be known as Hiripokuna, named after the church.

Hiripokuna at that time formed a part of Deduru Oya jungles where wild elephants roamed freely. Even when the construction of the church was in progress, wild elephants were found in the church premises.

At that time there was no proper roads to the village. At time of floods they had to cross the Kolamune Oya, a tributary of Deduru Oya, with the aid of ropes tied to trees on both banks of the river.

In 1923, when the Archbishop Anthony Coudert came to consecrate the church, there were floods and he had to cross the river in a padda boat with great difficulty. But when he went to the church it was a pleasant surprise to him and he had remarked that he never expected such a beautiful church in such a remote village.

At first St. Helen’s Hiripokuna came under the parish of Chilaw of the then Archdioces of Colombo. The parish priest was Fr. J.M. Masson who later became the Archbishop of Colombo. Zacharius Fernando also donated 14 acres for the maintenance of the church. He also inaugurated school for the children of the village in the church premises.

After the death of Zacharius Annavi, his four sons John, Charles, Michael and Peter managed the church till the new diocese of Chilaw was formed. In 1940 they handed over the church to Dr. Edmund Peiris, the first Bishop of Chilaw.

The present school building was built and donated by the late Chevalier John Fernando, eldest son of Zacharious Annavi.

Today Hiripokuna forms a separate parish of its own, with churches of Tissogama, Talampalla, Boraluweva, Kirindagama, Ottupallama and Prasannagama under its wing. St. Helen’s Hiripokuna caters to the spiritual needs of about 300 families in the area.

The parish priest of Hiripokuna Fr. Sugath Jayamaha and the assistant parish priest Fr. Gerald Jayawardena have made all the arrangements for the 85th anniversary of the church. The Vespers will be sung on August 23, followed by the procession that will go round the village. The festival High Mass will be celebrated on Sunday August 24.

(The writer is a former High Court Judge and Vice-President of the Newman Society Alumni Association)