A day before he died, Jesus did something his disciples could not quite understand.
He removed his outer garment, knelt on the ground, and washed their feet. It was not a gesture of politeness. It was a reversal of power.
“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them.
In Asia, we might.
Because here, we know what it means to touch another person’s feet — or even their sandals.
But in which country would a Catholic cardinal, clothed in the dignity of Rome, stoop down to pick up the missing sandals of a Buddhist chief monk?
Malaysia, perhaps. And the cleric could only have been the late Cardinal Anthony Soter Fernandez.
This story, “The Catholic Cardinal and the Sandals of a Buddhist Monk,” has since entered Malaysian ecclesial folklore.
That night, after an interfaith gathering at the Buddhist Maha Vihara in Kuala Lumpur, religious leaders were putting on their footwear in the dimly lit compound. The late Dr. K. Sri Dhammananda Nayaka Maha Thera, the revered chief monk of Malaysia and Singapore, was still looking for his sandals.
Soter — then archbishop of Kuala Lumpur — found them first. He did not call out, nor did he gesture.
He picked them up quietly, placed them at the abbot’s feet, and stood back meekly.
The chief monk was startled. “What? You are the archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, and you have touched my sandals. Do you know what that means?”
Soter replied, with characteristic understatement: “I am only the archbishop of Kuala Lumpur. You are the chief monk of both Malaysia and Singapore.”
The two men laughed. They embraced. But beneath that moment lies something that Holy Thursday helps us see more clearly.
In Asian culture, to touch another’s sandals is not a small gesture. It is a posture. It says: “I am your servant.”
And that is where the Gospel begins — not in titles, but in kneeling.
The quiet antidote to clericalism
Clericalism thrives on distance — between clergy and laity, between office and ordinary life, between title and tenderness. It is the subtle temptation to believe that ordination elevates one above rather than sends one below.
On the night of the Last Supper, Christ dismantled that illusion with water, a towel, and human feet.
Pope Francis repeatedly warned that clericalism distorts ministry. It turns shepherds into functionaries and priests into administrators. It confuses authority with entitlement.
Soter dismantled clericalism not with documents or decrees, but with a pair of sandals.
He declined state honorifics — Datuk and Tan Sri titles — even after being created a cardinal in 2016. “Just call me Soter,” he would say.
This was not affectation. It was theology lived publicly.
At retreats and seminars, parishioners recall how he would quietly join them after meals to wash his own plate and cup. No announcement. No optics. Just his hands in soapy water.
On Holy Thursday, the Church re-enacts the washing of feet. Soter did not re-enact it. He lived it.
‘Be a servant’
During the First Asian Mission Congress in Chiang Mai in 2006, preaching to a congregation that included several cardinals and bishops, Soter spoke with unusual directness.
“The leaders of the world lord it over their people,” he said, echoing the Gospel proclaimed across churches on Holy Thursday. “Whosoever wants to be more important among you, make yourself a servant first.”
Then came the line that must have made some ecclesiastical spines stiffen.
“Who are the high priests mentioned in the Gospels? They were the arrogant who oppressed the people under the laws of that time. We, the leaders of the Church, are the high priests today.”
There was no anger in his voice. Only clarity.
“As high priests, our vocation is to serve, and not to be served.”
It is one thing to preach about washing feet. It is another to kneel at our neighbor’s feet.
Authority without armor
Soter was small in stature but immense in moral presence. A senior priest once described him as a man of paradoxes: firm yet gentle, unafraid to stand for justice yet quick to reconcile once peace was possible.
Late one night, when Special Branch police officers arrived at his residence to arrest a religious brother accused of being a Marxist sympathiser, Soter met them with quiet authority. Serving them coffee, he simply said, “You do your work, and we will do ours.”
It was authority without theatrics — firmness without arrogance.
He was also a rare ally of the press. Catholic journalists in secular media valued him because he was accessible, candid, and unafraid of scrutiny. He offered not just quotes, but conscience.
He fasted with Muslims during Ramadan. He attended the Hindu Deepavali and the Chinese New Year open houses. His Muslim friend, Dr. Amir Farid Isahak, wrote a one-line eulogy on his passing: “Some of you may wonder how a Muslim became the godson of a Catholic cardinal?”
That question needs no answer. Clericalism builds distance. Servanthood builds communion with all and sundry.
The red hat and the basin
Soter was born on April 22, 1932. He was ordained in 1966. He became a bishop, archbishop, and eventually a cardinal.
But his witness is best understood not in ascent, but in descent.
On Holy Thursday, the Church places before us not a throne, but a basin and a towel.
In a global Church still grappling with authority, transparency, and the wounds of abuse, his memory becomes more than nostalgic. It becomes diagnostic.
The opposite of clericalism is not weak leadership. It is leadership that kneels. We know that the red hat signifies readiness to shed blood in service.
Soter seemed to understand something even more immediate: that before one sheds blood, one must first be willing to stoop low enough to wash feet — or, in our Asian reality, where feet are respected, to touch another man’s sandals.
Soter died on Oct. 28, 2020. But Holy Thursday does not allow the Church to remain at tombs or memories.
It brings us back to the floor, to the basin, to the uncomfortable nearness of service.
If Soter once stooped to touch another’s sandals, then the question before the Church in Asia is no longer historical.
It is immediate. Who among us is willing to kneel?
Ministerial priesthood, servant-priest
The red hat was placed upon his head — a sign of honor, even of martyrdom. But it was in stooping down that Soter most resembled Christ: the Lord who rose from supper, took a towel, and showed the Church that true leadership is found not in elevation, but in servanthood.
For it was also on this very night — Thursday — that Christ instituted the ministerial priesthood.
At the Last Supper, He offered the first Eucharist and commanded His apostles, “Do this in remembrance of me,” entrusting them not only with a ritual, but with a sacred identity: to serve, to shepherd, and to lay down their lives.
In that quiet stooping, more than in receiving the red hat, the truth of Soter’s priesthood came into full light — not as a dignity bestowed, but as a life poured out in the humble calling of a servant-priest.
With thanks to Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA) and Joseph Masilamany, where this article originally appeared.
