Cardinal Alencherry stresses collective action of all ’rites’

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Oct 29, 2016: Catholics of all three rites in India should collaborate and become open to cultural diversities for effective evangelization work, says the head of the Eastern-rite Syro-Malabar Church.

"It is the need of the hour. All the churches are doing the Lord’s work. Let us not have an exclusive attitude of evangelization work," Cardinal George Alencherry, head of the Syro-Malabar Church told media during the Oct. 16-18 "national mission" consultation in Punjab.


"The church is not a monolithic reality," he said stressing the need for local churches to be open to a cultural diversity of faith.

The consultation, organized by the Syro-Malabar Archdiocese of Faridabad, also marked the need to foster the "ad gentes" spirit and vocation of missioners, especially as the church is commemorating the golden jubilee of "Ad Gentes," the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church. Mission ad gentes generally refers to missionary outreach to people who are not Christians and helped the Eastern-rite churches open missions and dioceses outside its base in Kerala.

Rivalry and tension has often marked relations between India’s two Eastern-rites with the larger Latin-rite that has on many occasions opposed the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara churches having missions outside Kerala, seen collectively as Latin-rite territory.

The Church in India comprises Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara rites. The Latin rite follows the Roman liturgy that European missioners introduced in the 15th century. The other two Eastern rites, based in Kerala, southern India, follow Syrian church traditions and trace their origins to St. Thomas the Apostle.

The Second Vatican Council stressed the evangelization rights of all Catholics and underlined the freedom of all rites to engage in the mission of the church, paving the way for establishing the first Syro-Malabar diocese outside Kerala in 1972.

Faridabad Diocese based in Delhi was set up in 2012 to cover most of northern India. During the same period, the Syro-Malankara Church also established the Gurgaon Diocese near Delhi to help it work in northern India.

Syro-Malabar Archbishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara of Faridabad, Syro-Malabar Bishop Sebastian Vadakel of Ujjain and Latin-rite Archbishop Albert D’Souza of Agra were among some of the 200 missionaries who attended the seminar.

Despite Indian Christians tracing their faith to apostolic times of St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, Christians number 27 million, less than three percent of India’s 1.2 billion people.

Half of them are in four southern Indian states, making their presence in northern states such as Punjab well below one percent of the population.

Hence, Archbishop Bharanikulangara told media, the Catholic Church collectively has to reach out to a maximum number of people.