Hasitha Menaka Nanayakkara es one of the first two seminarians from the Diocese of Colombo, Sri Lanka to study at the University of Navarra.

"I was born in Sri Lanka, a country where the majority religion is Buddhism, professed by 70% of the population. Catholics occupy only 6% of the citizens. With a Catholic mother and a Buddhist father, my older sister and I were baptized at birth and raised Catholic from an early age. The effort my mother put in made it possible. "Thanks to the fact that Sri Lanka is a country where the difference between cultures is not a conflict, I was able to continue to grow in my faith. First in a Catholic school and then in a Buddhist school. Life has given me many challenges. Every day I was looking for reasons to protect my faith, but it made me grow," he says.

I realized as an adult what my mother had done for me and how much effort she put into forming me in the Catholic faith. It was at a shrine where she was working. Many pilgrims came there. One day she met a mother and her two daughters. She told him that she was Catholic but that her daughters were not baptized, so that when they grew up they could choose. When God gives you faith and you appreciate it as the best thing you can give to a child, it is a mistake to say that he should choose when he grows up, I affirm this in my own experience.

Since he was a child, he felt the vocation to the priesthood: "The Lord always showed me signs. I remember that at my first communion, the nuns asked the boys to become priests and the girls to become consecrated. Today I feel that God, from that moment, was calling me. I love the Lord. Eucharistic much.

I entered the seminary in 2009: "I was only 17 years old when I entered and it was very difficult for me to do it. However, vocation gives you a joy that fills you and gives you a peace that changes everything". 

I feel very grateful for the training I have received in my country for 8 years: 4 years in one minor seminary, 1 in the propaedeutic seminary and 3 in the major seminary. In 2017my bishop sent me to Pamplona, where I began my formation in Theology at the University of Navarra and at the Bidasoa International Seminary, which I consider a great and pure grace from God". 

"Both the University and the Seminary provide us with the necessary environment to be formed and to get through the difficulties. The purpose of a priest's life is not himself, but to love the Lord and his neighbor, and that is seen in each of the one hundred companions from 25 different countries that we live there".

I feel fully grateful for the help received from the benefactors, without which I could not be formed. I see the Seminary as the womb of the Virgin, where other Christs are born; and the benefactors as St. Joseph, from their support other Christs are born in the Church. That is why we often call them fathers and mothers.

I really appreciate the support that you give me and that allows me to study and continue my education. priestly life here in Spain. I thank you with all my heart. I assure you of my prayers pfor you and I pledge a take advantage of every opportunity and every moment of my formation to grow and identify myself with Jesus as a a priest, with God's grace.