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562 BENEDICT VADAKKEKARA To date the Commissary had never once received a letter from the General Secretary for the Missions. The General in person had been doing the bulk of the communicating. The Mission Secretary's letter was in effect an act of rubbing salt into his wounds because, besides given the sack, all that he had done with the former General's approval for finding out.an alternative location for the Study, was unceremoniously brushed aside. The reasons put forward to ridicule his plan for relocating the Study, were the exact litanies he was wont to hear in Agra 1 88 . It was not difficult for him to put two and two together and infer that vested interests were settling an old score 189 . While the general superiors' firm ruling evoked relief in some, it created consternation in some others. Opening houses in South India was a must for the normal wellbeing of the native friars, it was argued. In case some of them were to come to a dead-end in the North Indian Mission, they would have somewhere to fall back on, as the friars from Europe had their own Provinces to go back to in such eventualities. In the long run some others might succumb to the temptation to quit and become diocesan priests just to be able to work among their own people. Such costly risks may be anticipatively averted if the Order had its houses also in the South 1 90 • Even though the Superiors in Rome had pronounced against the Com– missary's move to make Monte Mariano a Capuchin house, a few friars in India refused to toe the official line. It was getting off on the wrong foot for the Order, they lamented. Mgr Perini's offer had been a golden opportunity for the 188 APCapTusc, Missione Indostan, Fr Commissary, "Sunto Storico...": ''Non mi potevo im– maginare come mai il Segretario o chi per lui avesse potuto scrivere una lettera cosi irrisoria, cosi ignorante di fatti importanti e pure trattati con tanta leggerezza". 189 APCapTusc, Missione Indostan, Fr Commissary, "Sunto Storico...": "Mi accorsi subito che questo era un piano di rivincita concluso in Agra e presentato al nuovo Generale, da quelli che avendo mosso querele al Generale passato per levare lo Studio da Mussoorie, e ne erano stati ripresi e minacciati". l90 AGCap G 68, 11, Novizjato e Studio, Fr Hilary of Arezzo to Fr General, Sardhana 11 August 1926: ''Un'altra grave ragione da considerarsi per stabilire qualche Convento nel Sud si e, che questi giovani di quelle parti, divenuti sacerdoti, forse tutti non la vorranno intendere di volere stare cosi lontani dal loro luogo nativo, in paese, per dire cosi forestiero, dove non intendono neppure il linguaggio, e quindi potrebbero essere tentati a lasciare l'abito religioso e mettersi quello di preti secolari all'unico scopo di starsene nelle loro contrade; questo danno al nostro Ordine, che adesso fa tanti sacrifici, sarebbe evitato, avendo laggiu i loro Conventi".