Bp Bosco Puthur,
Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Melbourne &
Apostolic Visitor of New Zealand

How is your Church in Australia faring?
The Syro-Malabar Eparchy of Australia is going slow but steady. We are establishing mission stations in different places with a view to raising them later as parishes. We gather the people together especially for Holy Qurbana and the administration of sacraments. We are also concentrating on the faith formation of children. The Sunday Catechism classes is a primary task for us.

Would you give a description of the Catholics in Australia?
Geographically, Australia is a large country. It is 2.5 times larger than India. But the population is very small, only 24 million, which is just two-thirds of Kerala. Density of population is very thin. In Kerala we are almost sixty people per square kilometer whereas in Australia it is only just three people per square kilometre. Twenty-four percentage of them stay away from religion as per the last census. They no longer belong to any particular religion. The largest religious group is Catholics – 23% of the population –, Anglicans 22%, Hindus 2% and Muslims 2%. There are 5 million Catholics in Australia. The Latin Church is divided into 27 dioceses. Oriental Catholics have now migrated from Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and India. There are five Oriental Catholic Eparchies, Maranites, Melkites, Chaldeans, Ukraines and most recently Syro-Malabar.

Which is the largest community?
Among Catholics of the eastern Catholic Churches, the Lebanese are the largest. They came 150 years back. They will be around two hundred thousand all together.

What about your community?
Australia had formerly a white only policy and only of late they have started receiving migrants from Asian countries, especially professionals. Around five hundred thousand Indians are living at present in Australia, of whom a hundred and twenty thousand are from Kerala. Out of this, 50 to 60 thousands are members of the Syro-Malabar Church.

How would you generally describe the Australian Syro-Malabar Church?
Our people come from middle class and lower middle class families. Majority of them are working in the health sector. Others are mostly employed in the IT sector. The larger part of the migration happened within the last 15 years. The migrated families have on an average three children, and they are very hard working people. They are striving hard to have a firm foothold in the community. They have very little spare time even on Sundays, because working on Sundays fetches them better money.

How do they respond to Church activities?
I would say that the majority are very very happy about the Church. Being in the Church, they receive spiritual guidance and timely administering of sacraments. They are providing faith formation to the children. There are others who are not that friendly towards religious practices. That’s a small minority. They are very cooperative in our pastoral works.

What kind of a relationship do you maintain with the Latin Church?
The Latin Church is very friendly towards us. They published a book about eastern Catholics in Australia, which shows their generosity regarding the Canonical positions on the Syrian Church. It is an official document published by the bishops’ conference for the information of all the Latin priests and deacons who are in pastoral formation. It informs them that the eastern Catholics belong to the eastern churches, and they have to go to their Church and receive the sacraments there.

Are you using the Latin Churches for your Sunday services?
In places where we don’t have churches of our own, we are using Latin Churches for our Qurbana, sacraments and catechism. We have a very friendly relationship with them.

Australia is a Christian country. How does it bear witness to Christianity to the larger public, which is also very much non-religious?
Australia is a very secular country. Here, our people actually give great Christian witness in the places where they work, our children in their schools, and young people in their universities. Our community is specially family oriented. Our family traditions and even our Christian traditions are a great witness to the people who have moved away from the Church. They are surprised that there are still people who believe in Christ and practice the Christian religion. Even though they may not go to Church, they appreciate us being in Australia. I think we are not a self-enclosed community, we are a community having a mission to bear witness to Jesus and the gospel values to the secular minded.

Recently, within the Church there have been a lot of problems and scandals, which also affected the Australian Church, especially in the case of Cardinal George Pell. How is this affecting the Catholic community in your country as well as your faithful?
I look at everything that happened in the Church in a spiritual way. Look at the early community of apostles; Jesus chose twelve apostles, but one of them betrayed Him and committed suicide and Peter himself denied Jesus three times and the most beloved disciples John and his brother Jacob were looking for the best places. Still, when we look at the scandals, I feel there is disappointment among the people. On the way to Emmaus, the disciples were not able to recognize Jesus who was walking with them. In spite of these troubles and humiliations, the Church will arise. The humiliation and suffering have to be taken as an occasion for purification and an invitation by Jesus Himself to His passion, death and resurrection.

You said that it is a confessing Church, and it is a suffering Church. People criticize the Church, because, rather than confessing, it covers up. How do you make confessing possible in the context of the problems confronting us?
As Christians, we should have the humility to look at the reality squarely in its face. If needed, we should apologize in public. We are all weak, sinful human beings. And when we realise we have committed mistakes, we should confess and purify ourselves. That’s what a disciple of Jesus should do with humility and truthfulness.

Pope Francis spoke to the Roman Curia during Christmas time: “today we need new Nathans to help so many Davids arouse themselves from the hypocritical and perverse life.” How do you see this statement of the Pope?
I think he was exhorting us to read the signs of the times. It is an invitation to us for self-purification. We all need a mea culpa, mea culpa and mea maxima culpa attitude and true transparency, simplicity and truthfulness.

There are some attitudes that do not allow self-criticism. Don’t you see that, that kind of an attitude exists even within the Church?
We are all human beings. It is very difficult for us to acknowledge that we are sinful. For me too it is very difficult. It needs God’s grace. From the human point of view, it is difficult to acknowledge and accept that we are sinful, weak and that we make mistakes. To think so, we need God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit. Human beings are the temples of the Holy Spirit and the Church is the instrument of the Holy Spirit. We need that sort of humility and acknowledgment of the grace working within us. It can bring us conversion and the realization of our mistakes.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German bishops’ conference, admitted that mistakes were made in the German Church’s handling of sex abuse, which was and is basically an abuse of spiritual power. He said he anticipates change in the Church. How do you see this call to a total renewal in the Church?
The Church has to change itself always just as every living thing renews itself. Even the human body cannot continue to be healthy unless it goes through renewal. The Church has to renew itself. I think among the gravest mistake the Church has made recently is covering up of the sexual abuse cases. We should be truthful to our call and never fall from that call of Jesus and the discipleship of Jesus. Human intelligence can fail, but the Church should live in unity with Christ. It has to be truthful and never cover up any blemish within the body of Christ.

The Oriental Churches are Synodal in structure, whereas the Occidental Church – Latin Church – is not Synodal. It is under one Pope. But Pope Francis is preferring a Synodal type of Church. How important is Synodality within the Church? How do you see the Synod exercising its power and leadership in matters of morals and spirituality?
I think the best leadership structure in the Church is the Synodal type. Even in the Western Church, Pope Francis is now recognizing that. But, in the Syro-Malabar Church, we are still learning the mode of being Synodal, because our Church was made Synodal only recently. Until now, we each had a diocese of our own. I would say we are in the initial stage of Synodal governance. We have not yet reached the maturity of Synodality. We are trying to walk together, to think together, to solve our problems together, and hence we are still walking the way to a mature form of Synodality.

There was no Synodal sense of grief or sense of failure. We should rise up from our failures. Do you express yourself in a Synodal sense of togetherness?
The Synod gives direction and correction as a way of establishing discipline in the Church. As bishops we need to give a direction to the people.

The intension was very clear, but the language could have been more inclusive. That is the criticism.
Yeah, I accept that point. I was in that Synod, and I fell it would have been proper to hear from the people. If they didn’t understand the mind of the Synod rightly, in the future, we hope to have a better understanding of the situation. We will try to use an inclusive language and try to bring more communion in the Church. Communion and solidarity are matters that worry me today.