
After nearly 60 years in the Indian province of Hazaribag, Australia-born Father Bob Slattery has truly found home. With his tall, lean and thin figure, wearing round glasses and carrying his prized possession — a cloth bag around his shoulder — Father Bob Slattery is not difficult to identify. The Australia-born Jesuit, who has been in India for nearly 60 years, continues his work among socially oppressed Dalits and ethnic minority people in the Hazaribag region of eastern India. The 83-year old landed in 1958 in this area, now part of Jharkhand state, where the Jesuit Hazaribag Province is based. “I volunteered for India because as a Jesuit I thought it would be good to serve the poor,” said Father Slattery, currently development director of the Hazaribag province.