I’ve never met Leorsin Seemanpillai (‘Leo’ to his friends) and I doubt that most of the hundreds of people crowding into St Mary’s Basilica in Geelong have ever met him either.

LeoBut what has united us all today and brought us together is this young man’s shocking death by self-immolation last week. Before the prayer service to remember his life of less than thirty years, we sit silently, stunned by our feelings of shame, sadness and, yes, powerlessness to have been able to prevent the traumatic death of this Sri Lankan asylum seeker on a bridging visa, awaiting news on his protection visa.
As we wait pictures of this young Tamil man play on a screen above us – Leo smiling with friends, by the sea, at the beach. A young man with the usual hopes and dreams. It’s too much to watch. I turn away and my eyes light on one of the Stations of the Cross that adorn the wall of this Catholic basilica.
It’s Jesus’ dead body being taken down from the cross and laid in his mother’s arms. I’m a battle-hardened former Catholic but this contemporary pieta moment brings tears to my eyes.

Leo’s friends approach the lectern and recall what they loved about him. Robert, his friend who knew him for 25 years and came with him on the same boat from the refugee camps of India says he misses Leo very much. Through a Tamil translator he remembers some ‘small’ things about Leo, particularly his concern about the children on the boat.
Cathie from Geelong who knew Leo for just a year remembers his generosity. He was a frequent blood donor, even the day before he died and often donated money to an orphanage.

Michael Martinez, the head of Diversitat, Geelong’s major ethnic support organisation for which Leo worked, says his co-workers above all recall his beautiful smile and a poem Martinez reads says in part: “A simple smile like mine could travel round the world.”
The service concludes with a lively Tamil song celebrating the liberated soul, voices and drumming echoing in a Basilica more used to pious hymns. How could this generous young man have slipped through the cracks of the system and been lost?
It’s probably not the occasion to mention Australia’s cruel asylum seeker policy which has run rough-shod like a juggernaut over public empathy but I’m shivering now in this massive building and it’s not just because it’s Winter.

This is a policy that has been responsible for a murder on Manus Island and countless acts of self-harm done by asylum seekers. Refugee advocates have been calling on the Federal Government to reverse its policy of returning Tamils to Sri Lanka. How did we get to this position, one lacking such empathy for the vulnerable?

More than three years ago the Australian Psychological Society published a report about its concerns for the mental health of Asylum seekers. It seems many are falling through the cracks but perhaps there are just too many cracks in this very broken system.