804 |India - ASC planning for Centenary
austraLasia 804
India: Cooperators' plan for centenary
 
NEW DELHI: 5 February '04 --  The leaders of the Association of Salesian Cooperators from the nine Indian provinces met with their SDB and FMA Delegates at Don Bosco Provincial House, Kolkata, on 25 January to plan for the celebration of the centenary of their presence in India.
 
The Association of Salesian Cooperators in India will complete 100 years in 2006. It was launched in the ancient town of Thanjavur in South India on 4 February 1906, just three weeks after the first group of Salesian missionaries to India arrived there. That day, forty ‘heads of families’ were enrolled during a special service conducted by Fr. George Tomatis, the first Salesian Superior in India. Fr. Tomatis spoke to the 40 elders about Don Bosco, the Salesian Congregation and the meaning and objectives of the pious Association of Salesian Cooperators. His talk, in French, was translated into Tamil by Fr. Xavier Coelho, the local parish priest.
 
Today there are some 2500 Cooperators distributed in nearly 120 centres spread over the nine Indian Provinces. Plans are afoot to make the centenary an occasion of renewal for the Cooperators. There will be animation programmes and celebrations in every Province to mark the 100 years of the Cooperators’ presence in the country. The two-year-long celebrations will conclude with a grand national-level centenary Congress at Thanjavur on 14-16 January 2006 and a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Vailankanni, the Lourdes of the East.
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