Bp Raphael Thattil

Where is Shamshabad diocese situated?
Shamshabad is a town situated 25 kilometres off the city of Hyderabad. It is the new developing airport city of Telangana. We have around 20,000 migrants scattered in Secunderabad and Hyderabad. We have another 5000 in other Telugu speaking cities like Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Nalgonda, and Eluru. After Chennai, this is the most significant segment of the Syro-Malabar migrants in India.

What type of people are settled in Hyderabad and Secunderabad areas?
We have different types of people here. We have professionals like IT engineers and scientists working in the numerous national institutes of India located in Hyderabad, like the defence researching centres. A lot of officials and professionals like Tessy Thomas, Missile Woman’ of India, live and work here. The second group consists of business people and ordinary factory workers who work in BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited) and other firms. The third group consists of students who are studying in EFLU (English and Foreign Languages University), universities of Agriculture and other coaching centres.

What will be your pastoral priority for them?
Very often we make the mistake of considering migrants as an income generating group, especially for building churches. Their families in Kerala also think of them in the same way. I think that outlook has to be totally changed. These people are missionaries. Their migration is also for the cause of Jesus and for propagating the faith of Jesus through their Christian influence. The younger generations who are born and brought up here speak chaste Telugu. They can interact with the local people. They are living in an area that is a fertile land for evangelization. The migrants are missionaries.

What do you mean by missionary care?
In Kalyan, Faridabad and Mandya dioceses, migrants are well taken care of. We have always demanded, told Rome that our Church has the potential for missionary activities and so should not be banned from evangelization. As apostolic visitor, I persistently demanded during the last three years that Vatican should not prevent the Syro-Malabar Church from entering into missionary activity. The Syro-Malabar Church should be given equal opportunity for missionary work.

As one appointed for the whole of India’s migrants, how do you see a very significant letter Pope Francis wrote to the bishops of India?
In 1987 Pope John Paul II had written a similar letter, but it was not well understood by the Latin bishops. They still have reservation against the Syro-Malabar Church. They consider the jurisdictional entry of the Syro-Malabar Church in terms of gain and loss. So, the Holy Father has made it clear to them through the present letter that they should not see entry of the Syro-Malabar Church into their geographical area as a matter of gain and loss; they should rather see it as equal participation in meeting the challenges of evangelisation. The Syro-Malabar Church has great potential for evangelization, which should not be denied opportunities. Though the Syro-Malabar Church provides outstanding pastoral care for the migrants, I have the anxiety that they are not entering seriously into the missionary activities.

In the 60’s and early 70’s of the last century, youth from the Syro-Malabar Church have migrated to various places, especially in the North and the North-East. Wherever they went they plunged into mission activities. Now that kind of a missionary zeal has some way dampened in our Church. Priests and religious no more venture out for it, but job opportunities are moving the laity out to different places. Are you expecting this laity to become missionaries as well?
Exactly. It is true of all the Indian churches today. We withdraw from whichever place encounter difficulties. We may have personnel shortage and may have to deal with political antagonism. We only used to do evangelization under favourable conditions. That is not what the Lord has commanded us. In this aspect, we have to learn a lot from the Protestant Church. I have recently come to know that K.P. Yohannan has around a hundred churches in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and Orissa. Our concept of evangelization in a favourable situation is to be radically questioned and amended. The quality of the Syro-Malabar Church is not to be judged from the transmission of faith to the next generation. Are we transmitting the faith to other people? We have not yet done so.

This kind of missionary thrust came to this Church only after the influence of the Western Church through the Synod of Diamper. Before that the Church was simply one cast within the hegemonic Hindu caste system. When we speak so highly about the Syro-Malabar identity and the BJP leadership supplements by seeing Syro-Malabarians as higher caste Christians who do not disturb the ethos of India, that is problematic. Are we daring to step out of Kerala?
Even as we demand equal right for evangelization, we have to prove that we have a vision and mission for evangelizing the whole country. The Syro-Malabar Church is very much imprisoned within its vision about the Church. We have not risen to the horizon of the global Church. For example, we are not able to understand that there are Tamil speaking Syro-Malabar Catholics in Thucklai, and like them Telugu speaking people in Adilabad, and Marathi speaking people in Chanda. We have not brought them into the main stream of the Syro-Malabar Church.

I have the impression that we are being too particular about implanting the Kerala version of the Syro-Malabar Church wherever we go. Don’t you feel that is to be rectified?
Pastoral care is not like transplanting a coconut tree from Kerala to Karnataka, which is, what we are doing at present. We have to be aware of the challenges of the mission. The Malayalam heritage may not taste well for people of the North-East. We have to blend our tradition with the local culture. Fr Placid would say that we are oriental in worship, we are Indian in culture and we are Catholic in faith. Indian should not have a meaning that is restricted to Kerala.

There is a Syrian Oriental Church in Kerala which is ready to conduct mission activities. But they will never keep anybody inside their church; they will make the baptised individual a member of another church. Do you think traditionally the Syrian Catholics of Kerala have a high caste mentality?
The twenty-first century will tolerate such a mentality. Our mental framework is very much restricted and narrowed down to Kerala. Institutionalization is another major problem with our mentality; it acts as a block for evangelization. If you are preoccupied with institutions, how can you work at the grass root level!

In the recent years, the Syro-Malabar Church feverishly went about establishing ecclesiastical structures all over. It can be seen as power politics. But, 50 years back, our Church was so missionary. We send out hundreds of nuns and priests without any reservation. They worked miracles in the field of evangelization. Now we all have to boast about is our structural progress. Does it really enhance our prestige?
We have 31 dioceses in India, and the jurisdictional territory of Shamshabad diocese is defined as all other than the territories of these 31 dioceses, which means it is like a rainbow spanning the horizon. We need to do a lot of centres for experimental studies. The primary concern certainly will be pastoral care for the Syro-Malabar Church faithful. But I would like to tell you that, as a bishop designated for Shamshabad, I will give equal priority to both. We need some sort of a deconstruction of the concept of the Church.

In Telangana, there may not be much resistance to evangelization, but in the rest of the Indian states persecution is a stark reality. How are you going to conduct mission activities in the midst of persecution?
I have a feeling that direct evangelization may be difficult, but indirect evangelization will be possible. There is still much scope for that. For example, Sr Sudha Varghese, who received Mar Kundukulam award, was working among a people who were denied human rights. It was a difficult job, but slowly people accepted her. They are now coming to the mainstream.

Christianity is basically divinised humanism. That humanism is totally absent and dead in many of the Northern villages. The village culture is extremely feudalistic. The regime wants to keep the caste ridden structure and culture intact. Wherever you enter in the name of man, in the name of humanism, in the name of Christianity, you will be confronted. Isn’t that true?
Yeah! That is very true.

Are we ready to face it?
That is very challenging mission, for which we have to sit together and think about a pedagogy that is reasonable, realistic and responsible to the needs of our country. The Synod has to shift its discussion to these things. We have to think about institutions that do research on them. Now we have a research institute in Mount Thomas where we teach people Syriac only. As far as I understand that the Syro-Malabar Church has big parishes, big dioceses, big religious congregations and big institutions, but we don’t have a Church as such. Ernakulam thinks in terms of Ernakulam, Changanasserry thinks in terms of Changanasserry, CMI thinks in terms of CMI. We are too centripetal, we are no more centrifugal, which means we are too much concerned about ourselves. This is what Pope Francis means when he talks about the narcissism of the Church.

The Latin bishops have accepted the three-rite reality. Don’t you think that cordial relation with the Latin hierarchy and the Syro-Malankara hierarchy is the need of the hour?
In the letter of the Holy Father, he says that the Latin Church should be gracious and generous to the Syro-Malabar Church and Syro-Malabar Church should co-exist with the Latin Church. We should not remain aloof from the Latin Church. If we have a sharing attitude, we can co-exist and collaborate with others.