Fr. Tigga, 71, ministered for a time in the Jefferson City diocese
Father Gregory Tigga, 71, a priest from India who ministered in the Jefferson City diocese from 2013 to 2016, died on April 15 in Holy Cross Hospital in Kunkuri, India.
The Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on April 17 in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Kunkuri, with Bishop Emmanuel Kerketta of the Diocese of Jashpur presiding and two other bishops from nearby dioceses and about 200 fellow priests concelebrating.
Joining them at the Mass were about 300 nuns and 5,000 faithful, including many non-Christians.
“Fr. Tigga was a man of prayer — hardworking and very sociable,” said Father Alex Ekka, a fellow priest of the Jashpur diocese, who is serving as administrator of St. Ann parish in Warsaw and Ss. Peter and Paul parish in Cole Camp.
Fr. Ekka said Fr. Tigga was very friendly and could win the hearts of many wherever he worked, be it in India or the United States.
Father Jerry Kaimann, who served with Fr. Tigga for a year after the latter priest arrived here, remembers him as “a very gentle, kind, kind of person.”
“The people, the parishioners, really liked him,” said Fr. Kaimann, pastor of St. Bonaventure parish in Marceline and sacramental minister of Immaculate Conception parish in Brookfield.
A priest forever
Fr. Tigga was born on April 18, 1946, and was ordained to the Holy Priesthood in 1973 to serve in the Diocese of Raigarh in northern India.
He was incardinated into the Diocese of Jashpur upon its creation in 2006, serving as director of the diocesan Jaga Jyoti Pastoral Centre in Ginabahar.
In keeping with his bishop’s desire to have priests spend time as missionaries, Fr. Tigga came to the Jefferson City diocese in 2013.
He ministered for a year as associate pastor of the Marceline and Brunswick parishes and St. Mary of the Angels parish in Wien.
In 2014, he was appointed temporary administrator of Immaculate Conception parish in Owensville and St. Alexander parish in Belle.
“Fr. Greg has been a great addition to our parish family over this past year,” Fr. Kaimann wrote in 2013. “It is very obvious that he is a spiritual and prayerful man. I will miss him. On the other hand, he is quite capable to be a pastor, so I wish him the best in his new parishes.”
Fr. Tigga returned to his home diocese in 2016 and was diagnosed with bone-marrow cancer shortly thereafter.
Fr. Ekka noted that Bishop Kerketta was able to anoint Fr. Tigga shortly before his death.
Surviving are two sisters, as well as several nieces and nephews.
In keeping with tribal custom, a memorial Mass will be offered on May 16 at Fr. Tigga’s ancestral home in the village of Gholeng so that those who were not present at the funeral can come and pray for the departed.
As a sign of mourning, all the immediate male members of the family will shave their heads bald for this occasion.
“Live for one another”
In a 2013 interview with Chris Houston, a reporter for the Linn County Leader newspaper in Brookfield, Fr. Tigga offered a universal message of love and acceptance and preservation of human life and dignity.
“We must discover how much we are alike,” the priest stated.
He noted in that interview that his people, who are Oraon Tribals, share the fruits of their labors equally.
“We call that an expression of peace, love and happiness,” he told the reporter. “Unless I give love, I cannot receive love.”
He said the unbridled materialism that is consuming the developed nations of the world will never provide real satisfaction.
“When people place so much value upon things, they lose the value of human life,” he told the Linn County Leader. “... We need to come back to ourselves and live for one another.”
“Warmth of love”
In 2016, when Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa of Kolkata a saint, Fr. Tigga told a reporter for The Catholic Missourian about an encounter he had with the “saint of the gutters” while he was a seminarian.
“She had such a deep love for priests,” Fr. Tigga recalled. “She would tell us, ‘Priests put Jesus there for us. We cannot take Him unless the priest first gives Jesus to us. Without priests, there is no Eucharist and without Eucharist, we miss God and the love of God in our life.’”
The world is in desperate need of the warmth of love,” Fr. Tigga observed. “Her life was endowed with the kind of compassion Jesus asks of us all.
“We are to be merciful as God is merciful to us,” he said.
