Category: From The States

Bishop Emeritus Stephen Athipozhiyil of Alleppey passed away due to cardiac arrest on April 9, at 8.15 pm at St. Sebastian, Visitation Hospital, Arthunkal in Kerala. He was 77. Funeral was held on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at Mount Carmel Cathedral at 10.30 am.

Another mysterious death of a novice nun was reported from Kerala, the southern Indian state with a sizable Catholic population.
The 21-year-old nun trainee had gone to room at 10:30 pm on April 1. When she did not join a special night prayer in the convent chapel, sisters went to her room and found her hanging. They rushed Alex to a nearby Dharmagiri Hospital where she was declared brought dead.

The Catholic Church has lost another Church in the land of Telugu.
Bishop Emeritus Innayya Chinna Addagatla of Srikakulam died at 11:30 pm on April 1, at the residence of the local Bishop. He was 84, says a report from Father Stephen Alathara, deputy secretary general of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in India.

The Church in the undivided Andhra Pradesh on March 30 mourned the death of Bishop Mathew Cheriankunnel, who had sacrificed his life for Telugu people.
The first Bishop of Nalgonda diocese died in the afternoon of March 30 in the regional house of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh. He was 91.

A Catholic archdiocese in the southern Indian state of Kerala has informally begun the documentation on Ajna George, who many now view as an apostle of Eucharist.
Ajna, a member of the Jesus Youth movement and an assistant professor, died January 21 in Kochi, the commercial capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala. She was 27 when she died fighting cancer.

Sister Paul Vincent, a member of the Daughters of St Anne of Calcutta died in road accident in a remote area in West Bengal state.
Sister Vincent’s funeral Mass was held at 3 pm on March 28 in St. Paul the Apostle Church in Kamarchowki followed by the burial in nearby St. Anne’s Convent compound.

The newly elected leader of northern India’s first Catholic religious congregation for men says his priorities include fostering unity and missionary zeal among his people and bringing a movement of indigenized Catholicism to mainstream society.
“Our community life is not perfect. Some members are indifferent. So, my first priority is to bring all the members together under one umbrella through dialogue,” says Father Francis Prasanna Raj, who on February 28 was elected as the superior general of the Indian Missionary Society.

Father Poulose Mangai, a renow-ned professor of theology who worked among rickshaw pullers of Old Delhi area, died on March 26 after a brief hospitalization.
Father Mangai was a prolific writer and editor of Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflections, Asia’s top theological publication. He was 64.

Dalit Christians on March 29 urged the apostolic nuncio to revoke the appoint-ment of Bishop Francis Kalist of Meerut as the new archbishop of Pondicherry-Cuddalore.
Led by the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement, hundreds of people protested in Chennai, capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, against the a non-Dalit’s appointment as the archbishop of Pondicherry-Cuddalore.
They want the nuncio to appoint a Dalit archbishop. “Otherwise Dalit Chri-stians will stop the consecration of Bishop Kalist scheduled for April 29 in Pondiche-rry,” M Mary John, president of Dalit movement, told Matters India March 29.
He said the Dalit Christians plan to hold similar protest demonstrations in other parts of Tamil Nadu and in Pondi-cherry with this demand in coming days.
India MattersIndia Archbishop – elect Francis Kalist. The demonstrators conde-mned the continuing caste domination, caste oppression, and caste atrocity in the Catholic Church.
It noted that no Dalit archbishop has been appointed so far in the Pondicherry-Cuddalore archdiocese. Dalit Christians have protested to end the injustice by demanding the appointment of a Dalit Archbishop. However, the Church has appointed a caste archbishop again, John regretted.
Dalits form 64 percent of the Indian Catholic Church. In Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry they form 75 percent.
“But out of 180 Catholic bishops in India, only 11 are Dalits, and only 2 out of 31 Archbishops are Dalits. Only one of the 17 bishops in Tamil Nadu-Pondicherry is a Dalit,” John explained.

A diocese in the southern Indian state of Kerala is out-raged after some miscreants broke into a chapel and dese-crated sacred Hosts kept inside a tabernacle.
While the diocese of Co-chin views the incident as part of hate activities spreading in Kerala, a senior Catholic journalist suspects the involvement of the satanic cult growing in the southern Indian state.
Father Johney Xavier Puthukkattu, the diocesan public relations officer, says the sacristan of St Jacob chapel in Arookutty found the tabernacle broke open on the morning of March 29 and informed the priest, who lives a nearby house.
After a search, they found the Hosts scattered in a marshy land, some 200 meters away. The chapel’s donation box was also found abandoned there.
The chapel is a substation of St Anthony’s Church Padu-vapura at Arookutty, 13 km southeast of Kochi, the commercial capital of Kerala.