He is battling prostate cancer, hypertension, glaucoma and diabetes. But politician turned Roman Catholic Deacon, Terrence “Terry” Gillette is passionate about his new mission in life.

Gillette, 73, has been serving the Roman Catholic Church full time since he retired from elective politics in 2002, after representing the people of his adopted parish, St Mary for close to 30 years.

He first served as parish councillor of the Belfield division and then Member of Parliament for East Central and Western St Mary between 1976 and 2002, broken between 1983 and 1989 by his People’s National Party’s (PNP) boycott of the snap election called by then Prime Minister Edward Seaga.

Gillette was born in Bethel Town, Westmoreland, but grew up in St James where he attended the highly respected high school Cornwall College from 1949.

Now after what he considers a rewarding and successful life in politics, farming, the baking industry and other business ventures, Gillette is totally devoted to serving God in a way that he believes is fitting and appropriate.

“I started to prepare myself from an early age. I was born an Anglican, but I became a Catholic at the age of 12, when I met a boy who said that he was a Catholic and ‘without being a Catholic you couldn’t expect to go to heaven’,” Gillette told the Sunday Observer in an interview at his Woodside home in Central St Mary.

“I objected to him (boy) until I went to Cornwall College and found out that in the period of history that we studied, there was only one church in the whole world, the Roman Catholic Church, and by serious consideration I decided to follow the one true church and I started my Catholic training. I have never deviated from the Catholic Church.

“Most people thought that I would become a priest, but in those days the Jesuits were the body of religious people who ran Jamaica and they had many strictures, one of them was that they would not accept an unmarried father of a child to become a priest. So I abandoned the idea of becoming a priest and since the 1960s, the revival of the diaconal allowed many of us to accept to serve in the second tier of being a member of the clergy.

“I wanted to have started earlier, when I was about 60, but I didn’t think that I would mix, unlike my colleague Ronnie (Thwaites) to be serving as a parliamentarian and to be ordained as a clergyman. I would rather separate myself. That’s what I did when I retired from politics,” said Gillette, who was ordained a deacon on October 25 last year, following four years of preparatory work.

Relaxing these days in the cool temperatures of the deep rural village that is often characterised by singing birds, and chirping crickets, Gillette is taking things in stride.

“It’s very difficult to ruffle my feathers. I enjoy everything that I do from I know myself. I don’t enjoy being sick, but I’ve never allowed myself to succumb to adversity of any kind and at the same time I learnt that a mature person is one who accepts success with the same level of enthusiasm as he accepts adversity,” he philosophises.

After stepping away from a life of politics and being embraced by the church and the wider religious community, the one-time insurance salesman confesses:

“I didn’t think that being divorced from my first marriage that I could proceed any further on the way to becoming a priest. “I struggled with the idea of remarrying and remaining in the church until I found out that I could have the first marriage dissolved, because after examining the bishop’s grounds, I could be remarried.

“I later found a young lady who is a devoted Catholic and we put our lives together. Marriage is the only time that one and one makes one,” said the man who at one time enjoyed wearing Fidel Castro-like military suits in the 1970s and was tagged a Castro look-alike, after the former Cuban president.

Gillette, who served as state minister for construction (works) and agriculture under Prime Ministers Michael Manley and PJ Patterson and was the deputy chief parliamentary whip, has stepped up a gear in his quest to be closer to God.

“It is the satisfaction of serving God by serving my brothers and sisters. We are all one, we say ‘Our Father’ when we pray. I have trained myself. More and more everyday that I live for God, I find myself closer to accepting all that God commands us to do, but I am not satisfied that I have reached the zenith, so I continue to strive to reach it and I beg God for the privilege of reaching total union with him before I leave this earth, so that I can reunite with him in paradise,” Gillette said.

Are some people turned off by his conversion from politics to the priesthood? Gillette brushed the thought aside.

“If they are, they have not expressed it to me. On the other hand, since I have retired, a number of people have expressed dismay that I have given up the job of being their parliamentary representative.

“People tell me that everyday. But I ask them to forgive me, because I have to look after my immortal soul and help them with their immortal soul also, because that is where we are all headed. Someone else can be Member of Parliament and if they need my help call me, I will try to help.

“Psalm 90 says 70 years is a man’s life. In September I will be 74, so I am three and a half years overtime. It’s a stupid person that is given the gift of that length of time to live on this earth and don’t look back into himself to say, have you found God, do you know God, are you serving God?

“We can do good to our brothers and sisters in every way that we can. I am not going to tell them to come and sleep in my bed, but I will try and find a bed for them,” Gillette said.

Now the largest cocoa farmer in Jamaica, with 30 acres of his 47- acre farm in Esher, St Mary under cultivation, Gillette lives off a what he considers a simple and modest pension.

He produces over 1,000 boxes of cocoa each year and gets prizes annually from farmers’ organisations like the Jamaica Agricultural Society. But the money he earns from that project goes back into the farm for improvement.

“I want to sell the farm, because I am getting gradually older and older. I am on overtime, so I can get cut off anytime. I am going to be 74 soon.

“I am suffering from prostate cancer. It’s my third year of exposure to that. It’s under control though. They want me to take the radiation treatment, but the amount it would cost would be unfair to my children and my wife to go and spend nearly $2 million to extend my life…for how long? It better me tek what me get.

“I also have glaucoma and I am diabetic. I have been hypertensive since 1984 and diabetic from 1992, but I am within the okay limit. There are times when I might eat too much starch, mostly mango crop and breadfruit crop, but I generally keep things under control,” Gillette said.