When Chris De Sousa made the decision to discern a Religious vocation with the Somascans, most people were more than a little confused.
“‘What are you doing? Are you serious?”, that’s what most people said,” Mr De Sousa, 28, told The Record.
He had been practising law for five years, steadily working his way up from office dogsbody, just after graduating, to the level of Associate.
Chris De Sousa had always felt a call to a missionary kind of life but said he had become complacent with regard to discerning further and pursuing the vocation to which God was calling him.
His ascendancy in migration law saw him move to Sydney in 2009. It was a blessing in disguise, he said; an opportunity to discern whether what he had felt at World Youth Day, a year earlier, had been real or not.
“I think I thought it was a little bit of hype from 2008 and I was just letting it fizzle and then when I was transferred to Sydney I really felt that God was giving me an opening there, by myself, to really take it seriously,” Mr De Sousa said.
When he wasn’t at work, he was doing anything he could to aid his discernment – retreats, silence and solitude mornings, teaching RCIA at Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral, and assisting in youth ministry.
Working with destitute youth is a special charism, a hallmark, of the Somascan Order who have administered Mr De Sousa’s home parish of St Jerome’s in Spearwood since 2004.
That youth focus has been part and parcel of his own spiritual development.
Somascan Father and St Jerome’s Parish Priest, Fr Johnson Malayil CRS, asked him to form a parish youth group back in 2005, a group that continues to meet every Sunday.
Ever since the Somascans arrived at Spearwood, he has been impressed by their community-centred approach, both among the priestly brothers themselves and in their appreciation of the cultural make-up of the parish.
“As much as St Jerome’s has always been my home, when the Somascans came, there was something about them that just drew me in,” Mr De Sousa said.
“They were very traditional and very welcoming of all the different cultures that make up our parish and incorporated them in community life.”
The youth group is not an ‘add-on,’ it’s an integrated part of the parish, he said; working with youth is something he wants to continue.
“I really love catechising young people and bringing the faith to them, reaching out to all those who may be troubled and looking for something to grasp, and bringing Christ to them.”
His background as a young professional may also come in handy, he said, in helping others confront the challenges of modern, relatively affluent life.
“[Legal practice] was a very stressful atmosphere with very long hours.”
“If I didn’t have my faith that got me through those stressful times, I probably would have turned to alcohol and drugs, which I know a lot of my colleagues in the legal industry have unfortunately turned to,” he said.
“At the teenager level, again, they may have a lot more (relative to youth, elsewhere in the world) but that comes with a lot more access to addictions, or feeling abandoned by peers or their own families.
“I hope to be able to reach out to them as well. That charism is really, deeply planted in my heart.”