CHENNAI: As a teenager in Madurai, Susai Jesu led 4.30 am prayer services in his small Catholic village before the farmers went into the fields. He directed the choir, helped at Mass and soon began training for the priesthood.
Little did he know that this dedication would take him halfway around the world on a vast cross-cultural journey — ministering among Canada’s Indigenous Catholics, learning their language, culture and historical traumas. He hosted Pope Francis at his Edmonton parish when the late pontiff visited Canada in 2022 to apologise for the Catholic Church’s collaboration with the “catastrophic” system of Indigenous residential schools.
And as of January 26, Jesu is now an archbishop for northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan. He’ll oversee ministry to around 49,000 Catholics, mostly Indigenous, dispersed across a region larger than Texas.
In a ceremony punctuated by traditional drumming — as well as songs and prayers in an unusual combination of Cree, Dene, English, French, Oji-Cree and his native Tamil — Jesu was consecrated archbishop of Keewatin-Le Pas.
Jesu’s first order of business is simply to spend time with the people. At each of the far-flung parishes he visits, he plans not only to preside at worship but to be “physically present with them,” he said in an interview. He hopes to build trust over time in a population that includes many loyal Catholics but also many who remain wounded and alienated from the church.
The need for relationship building is a lesson he learned early in India, when he witnessed the disappointment of parishioners during the infrequent times when a priest visited their remote village but left soon after Mass.
“I told myself, if I ever become a priest, I will always be available to the people,” Jesu recalled. “Not only during the Mass, but after the Mass, greeting them before they go home, (asking) do they need anything, any special prayers?”
Jesu is the first Indian-born bishop to oversee a diocese of North America that isn’t primarily serving the Indian diaspora. He was born in Madurai.
As a teenager, he joined a religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and was ordained a priest in 2000. He worked for years among an Indigenous group in northern India, which he said helped prepare him for his later transfer to Canada in 2007.
After months of training and acculturation in Canada, he visited parishes throughout the vast Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas. It was a sombre ministry in many ways as he responded to chronic problems of drug and alcohol abuse and suicide.
Jesu joined local elders in conducting healing workshops, and he went on to get a master’s in counselling and spirituality in Ottawa.
He later became pastor of Sacred Heart, working among Edmonton’s urban Indigenous population and often ministering to homeless people.
Jesu served in Edmonton for eight years, and after a brief posting at a pilgrimage shrine, he received the appointment as archbishop in late 2025.
For those still estranged from the church, he hopes “to be with them and to help them see how we can work together on this,” he said. “How much can I accompany you in your suffering?”