Fr. Bonaventure (nicknamed Bonnie) was the Catholic chaplain for SMS and Mt. Abu from 1963 till his death in 1989. He was based in St. Mary's but also served Sophia High School and St. Anne's Catholic Church in the town.

Bonnie was a French Capuchin priest. He was about 6'5" tall, wore the brown cassock of the Order with a hood, a white cincture (the rope around the waist) and open leather sandals. While I have seen many CBs in layman’s clothes, I have never seen Fr. Bonnie in anything but a cassock!

He stood ramrod straight and had the same posture while riding his bike from school to the town. Legend has it that he served the French army in WWI, then became an engineer, then a priest and came to India. Unlike the Irish CBs who went back to Ireland every 5 years on vacation, I never heard of Bonnie going back to France. He was a constant presence for my 10 years at SMS. He spoke with a French accent but was fluent in English.

When he first arrived at SMS, Fr. Bonnie lived in the peach garden cottage below Cup Rock and beside the tennis court. But after a panther visited the Verghese's he switched with them and moved to the cottage down the hill behind the gym (which is now a ruin behind the Lower Khodra Dam wall). This cottage also had a solitary peach tree and Bonnie was quite willing to let boys pick from it. Shortly after the Rice Wing was built in 1968, the cottage behind it was also built and Bonnie moved there because by 1970 work had started on the Lower Khodra dam and the rocks around Bonnie's old cottage were being blasted.

Until 1972, Fr. Bonnie conducted Mass and other Catholic functions in the SMS Chapel which was located in the center section of the main building. It was sandwiched between the front-to-back middle corridor and the Big Dorm. The Chapel consisted of 3 sections - the main worship section containing the altar with the pews placed on 3 sides around it in a rectangle arrangement. The sacristy was narrow and as in most churches, located behind a wall behind the altar. The third section was the Confessional room, which was in a corner adjoining the staircase going to the upper floor classrooms of the main building.

In 1972, work started on the new Chapel adjacent to the Hospy. It was designed by Fr. Bonnie and Br. Kelly. This was completed and started functioning as the school Chapel in 1973. Fr. Bonnie then moved to a residence under the Chapel which faced the open field (now a football field) below the wall of the main field. But this was after I was out of SMS, so everything in this article is in the context of the original Chapel.

Fr. Bonnie's daily ritual was the morning Mass at 6:30am in the Chapel. This ended at 7:00am unless it was a High Mass. Bonnie would have a quick breakfast in the Sacristy, usually tea and bread delivered by the school kitchen. He would then ride his bike to Sophia on weekdays to say Mass for the Nuns and Sophians. On Sunday he would go to St. Anne's and the Sophians would walk to the church in their school uniforms in pairs thru town. After Mass, Bonnie would return back to SMS on his bike. On Sundays, he did a Benediction in the evenings at 6:30pm before dinner.

In some years, senior class Sophians elected French as one of their subjects for the ISC/Senior Cambridge exam. Bonnie was their tutor.

Fr. Bonnie never really talked about his life or skills. But he opened and fixed my wristwatch once while I looked on and had the tools including an eyeglass. During monsoons we always seemed to have a problem with the movie projector during the Saturday/Sunday movie nights in the gym. The reel drive sprockets seemed to skip the holes in the film and there would be a visual stutter. Br. O’Neill seemed to think it was due to moisture in the film and would warm the reels prior to show time. But sometimes this wouldn’t work. Then calls would be made to get Fr. Bonnie to take a look. Cheers would erupt when he entered the gym. Most often he fixed the problem and solidified the “engineer” part of the legend.

Fr. Bonnie was strict about decorum and sanctity of the Chapel. He didn’t much like the chatter in the Chapel when Br. O’Neill would hold choir practices or during long processes like Maundy Thursday’s washing of the feet when the congregation boys would get restless and start fidgeting and talking. Mistakes while being an altar boy didn’t sit well with him. Once while serving as an altar boy I pulled Tyronne Mendes (1972) the urn bearer out of the sacristy to incense the congregation twice – first at the wrong time with no incense in the urn. Bonnie noticed what was going on and shut us down. Then at the correct time, the congregation had to stand up again while we did it in the three directions of the pews. After Mass was over Br. Mac commented that I’d never become Pope!

Fr. Bonnie was the Spiritual Director of one of the 3 Legion of Mary praesidia in SMS and of the Curia (the officers of the 3 praesidia in SMS and 1 group in Sophia). It was tradition to have a party with all groups every year, alternating between St. Mary’s and Sophia.

In 1969 (my Class VIII) SMS was the host and the party was held in the gym. Due to some confusion, no staff member was present. Soon, the music was cranking and senior guys were on the floor dancing with the Sophia girls. Suddenly Fr. Bonnie arrived. He was livid at the behavior! The dancing and music was stopped. After scolding the seniors, Fr. Bonnie left the gym with the Sophians and the party ended.

Then in my last year 1972 under Principal Br. Judge, Sophia hosted the party. Again there was neither a staff member from either school present nor did Fr. Bonnie show up. Music played loud, we danced, we ate their delicious food and then we walked back to school. Later on Br. Judge asked about the party and who had supervised. When we told him no one he seemed quite surprised, then shrugged and said “Hope you had a good time”.

But Bonnie never objected to the Maundy Thursday Holy Fire in front of the center steps being kept alive by the non-Catholic boys while we went inside the Chapel and completed the Holy Thursday services. About 1+ hour later we would emerge and get a huge bonfire going, pulling branches and logs from the forest behind the school. One year it burned till the next morning!

Fr. Bonnie had an Indian manufactured full size bicycle. It was a female bike (without the bar) necessitated by his wearing the cassock. Bonnie went everywhere on his bike. Despite his age (and to us he was the age equivalent of Merlin the Magician, i.e. infinitely old!!) he had remarkable strength and stamina to ride the Mt. Abu hills. During rainy season he rode the bike wearing a poncho raincoat. He would let the momentum of the slope take him down to Paddy's Bridge without pedaling and partway up the other side. From the school to town direction it took him about halfway up the slope. Toward school, he would make it to the bend. If any school boys were around they would always want to wheel his bike back to his cottage. Bonnie also rode down to Abu Road on his visits to Fr. Francis the other French chaplain. He'd take the Rajasthan State bus back with his bike in the luggage rack on top of the bus.

Bonnie was an unwitting courier between SMS and Sophia on his bike rides. Notes were passed between senior class boys and girls by sticking them under his bike seat. At least one of these exchanges resulted in a Sophian and SMS boy being married till today.

Although Fr. Bonnie did not teach us academic subjects, he was quite familiar with the SMS students, especially those that were due to receive First Communion or Confirmation, and the regular Altar servers. Although Sophia was a Catholic school, most of the students were non-Catholic. So Bonnie knew the Sophian Catholic girls also. Since I had two younger sisters in Sophia for five and two years respectively, Fr. Bonnie was acutely aware of me.

One evening in my second year 1964/Class III, I was playing with other guys in front of the main building when someone approached me and said Fr. Bonnie wanted to see me. It was unusual to be called up by Fr. Bonnie for doing anything wrong per school rules. So the action stopped and the other boys followed to see what was going to happen. Fr. Bonnie said my sister in Sophia had sent me a gift, pulled his hand out from his cassock pocket and presented me with a marble! One!! Everyone laughed and I was teased about it for days.

But I'm sure no one can forget his influence or impact in their life.

The daily morning Masses for me was the same priest, same voice for 9 months per year for 10 years. To this day, I hear Fr. Bonnie saying Mass whenever I go to Church! I think Br. Judge may have realized how much we were getting out of it a bit too late and made it optional for us to attend Mass 3 days a week in November of our last year 1972. Of course the option was to do what the non-Catholics were supposed to be doing at that time - study!

He was the one and only person I told my failings every week for 10 years! There was Confession every Thursday during evening study time. Each class was sent to the Chapel one at a time. My standard confession usually went like this...

"Bless me Father for I have sinned. My last Confession was 1 week ago.

"I told lies. I said bad words. I fought with my friends. I did not obey my teachers. That's all Father".

Fr. Bonnie would then give me about a minute of consoling advice, penance of 3 Hail Mary’s followed by absolution. This did not deviate much even if I confessed to some other things like wasting food or breaking school rules.

Then came a Thursday in 1968/Class VII when there was an addition to my usual confession. I will only describe it as the topic of one of Br. Kelly's religion class a few years later in 1971/Class X, which he titled "Vexing Problem". I'm sure Fr. Bonnie had heard it all before and there was no change in his tone of voice or demeanor. But maybe he became sad about me because it made him go off in French! He asked me "Did you [one or two words in French]". Of course, I had no clue what he was asking but realized it was a "Yes" or "No" answer. Since I was little scared, embarrassed and didn't want a long sermon, I said "No Father". He gave me the same advice as in previous confessions and 3 Hail Mary's for penance.

This went on for the next two or three confessions. By then I was curious to know what he was asking me and what the penance would be for a “Yes”. So the next time he asked "Did you [one or two words in French]", I told him I did not understand. When he explained, I said “Yes Father”, because it was also the truth. Fr. Bonnie gave me advice more passionately than before and 3 decades of the Rosary as penance.

Fr. Bonnie taught my sister in Sophia the Catechism and gave her First Communion (held in St. Mary’s). In subsequent years he prepared both of us for Confirmation administered by Bishop Leo D'Mello of Ajmer. And he baptized at least one teenage SMS student who converted from Protestant to Catholic and several staff members’ newborn babies. Fortunately there were no deaths and unfortunately there were no marriages during my years in school to observe him perform these services.

In 1972 (my last year in SMS) at the beginning of October during Parents Week holidays, Fr. Bonnie went off on his bike to visit Fr. Francis down in Abu Road. On the way the bike skidded on a curve and he slammed into the retaining wall and broke his thigh. The first car to arrive at the scene was driven by SMS student Harish Shah’s (1974) father who recognized Fr. Bonnie and brought him back to the school. Since the school did not have the facilities for the treatment Bonnie was taken to St. Francis Hospital in Ajmer which is run by the same nuns who were in SMS and Sophia. It was a 6 hour drive to Ajmer. We never saw Fr. Bonnie for the rest of the year.

Nearly a year later in Oct 1973, Victor Nazareth (1972) and I returned to visit SMS. Somehow word got to Bonnie about our arrival and he came from his residence in the new chapel to the main field to meet us. Our class had done very well in the ISC exams. So the staff involved in our academics - Br. O'Donovan our class master, Mr. Goyal (Hindi Pop) and Br. Mulligan - were very happy to see us. But I was most struck by the happiness in Fr. Bonnie's eyes. I remember his words "Now you are grown up". We spoke to him for a while. His big regret was not being able to bend his knee to genuflect or ride his bike due to his accident and surgery. He had to be ferried everywhere in the school car. It was the last time I saw him.

(Awaiting details for this section) As age made performing his duties more difficult, Fr. Bonnie transferred to the retirement home in Ajmer where he spent his remaining days. He is buried in the foreign missionaries section of the cemetery.

—Ashley D’Souza (1972)