LORD REDEEMER- The Saviour of Divar!

 The feast of Our Lord Redeemer, normally held on the third Sunday of November, is celebrated with deep religious fervour by all the inhabitants of the island, irrespective of their religious affiliation.For this day, all the members who have otherwise migrated to other places, return to their ancestral homes on the island. A festive lunch is normally hosted for the villagers and the visitors by the celebrant(s) of the feast.

The history of the arrival of this statue is obscure. While there are versions of this legend which are more reliable, I shall give my version on the subject, a country version confirmed as an authentic legend by those still surviving 90. There once was a villager named Caetano Ferrao whose house was the same premises where today this Chapel stands. He worked for a sculpting firm in Sicily. After 27 years of service, he was to return home for good. He had made up his mind to take home one of the products of his own making and worked on his personal masterpiece whenever he had time. When it was time to leave and his boss was settling his account, he requested him to let him take his statue in lieu of his settlement. His boss, having been satisfied with his service, let him have the statue as well as the pension amount.

 However, when he reached the docks of Sicily, at the Customs, he had to pay luggage fare proportionate to the weight of the article. But as the officials weighed the statue, it appeared so heavy that they didn’t have enough weights to match it. Caetano was puzzled as the statue could not exceed 30 kgs. With tears in his eyes, he knelt down and beseeched the statue not to permit him leave Sicily without it. As the box was weighted again on his request, the first thing they noticed now was that the box had gone so light that even without weights, the pan stayed up in the air. The customs officials were frightened. There was a fellow female traveller who was wearing a hair flower-lace. In their desperation, a custom official requested the lady for a flower and put it in the pawn of the weights. The fulcrum came to rest. The weight of the box Caetano was carrying came to tally with the weight of an ‘abolem’. He was exempted from paying a single Lira as customs and luggage duty.

Once back home, he kept this miracle a secret. One night he found the door of his house open and the statue missing. Caetano got upset and would not sleep. He kept awake praying, and after a while he saw a tall gentleman, exactly a replica of the statue, with a big mast in his hand, led by a small white puppy carrying a lantern in his mouth, enter the house back again. Many saw the living statue walking around the ward so our Caetano named this ward as Bairro Sao Caetano, though now it is known as Saiba Vaddo. The statue continues to look over its people.