Come June 13 and the feast of the glorious St Anthony is celebrated all over the world, particularly in Portugal where he is a popular saint and in Goa, people throng the sanctuaries in a testimony of strong faith of the people in the saint.
Festivities are held on a grand scale in Siolim where he is the patron saint. In Salcete, the festivities are held at Deussua, a hamlet of Chinchinim village, where a Chapel of St Anthony stands for the last four centuries.
Anguished people who have lost something, frightened ones who have been robbed, lonely ones needing a partner to settle in life and so on… all roads lead to St Anthony sanctuaries for his intervention.
In 1752, a Portuguese nobleman Dom Joao Antonio de Malo, who had lost his eyesight, was being taken by a machila (palanquin) from Agassaim to Ribandar. When his bearers needed rest at Goa Velha below the Pilar hillock, they made a stop beneath a mango tree and told the nobleman that a statue of St Anthony was placed in a niche carved at a wayside log of a coconut tree at Goa Velha. Immediately the nobleman prayed to St Anthony, “You are known as the Saint of miracles, you are here in the open, in the sun and rain; if you restore my eyesight, I will build a beautiful chapel to keep your statue in”.
On the return journey, Dom Joao again was lowered at the same place and there the miracle is reported to have occurred. And Dom Joao could see the statue of the saint. When the nobleman was back home, without any help he climbed the steps of the palace. As his wife could not believe, he came out in the veranda and counted the vessels he could see in the bay.
Faithful to the vow, he brought the copies of best altars from Portugal, built the Chapel and placed the life size statute of St Anthony, which still exists in the Chapel at Goa Velha.
