ARUNACHAL: 25th February 2006 -- Tomorrow, 26th February
will see the
episcopal consecration of India's 23rd Salesian Bishop in India (some
eight of whom are still alive and active). He will be bishop of the
new
diocese of Miao, containing the major
headwaters and initial tributaries of the mighty Brahmaputra river.
His new diocese will be bordered by Tibet, China, Myanmar to the north
and east, and by the Indian states of Nagaland and Assam to the south
and west. Bishop George Palliparambil was the first resident
priest in Arunachal, Borduria, which is now the heartland of a new
diocese created by Pope Benedict XVI on December 7, 2005.
The first Christian and Catholic missionaries to broach this
forbidding territory were from the Paris-based Foreign Missions
Association. That was 1854 and they were on their way to Tibet. They
never made it. That year they met opposition and martyrdom in
Arunachal Pradesh. The Salesians came in 1922 - to Assam - and later,
young Fr Menamparambil, then Rector in Shillong and now Archbishop of
Guwahati, palled up with a young tribal chief in Arunachal. It became
the turning point for visits to and pastoral work in East Arunachal.
People accepted Jesus Christ with open arms. It went on from there.
In 1992 Fr George Palliparambil took up the mantle. In 1992 Mother
Teresa's Missionaries of Charity came to Borduria, and Don Bosco
School opened ten years later.
As the first resident priest in the area, Fr George opened a total
of eleven centres, Miao, the episcopal see for the new diocese, being
one of them. As of today the Catholic population of East Aranuchal is
approximately 70,000 in a population of more than 4 million. He will
have 6 diocesan priests but will have the support of many religious -
Salesians, Society of the Divine Word, Society of St. Francis Xavier,
and the Heralds of the Good News. Additionally there are Salesian
Sisters, Missionary Sisters of Mary Help of Christians, Missionary
Sisters of Charity, Carmelite Missionary Sisters and Sisters of Mary
Immaculate. There are also active members of the Don Bosco Secular
Institute.
East Arunachal describes itself as a mysterious, magical and
mystical land tucked away in India's far North-east, in fact it calls
itself Land of the Rising Sun, pace one other well-known nation
which
adopts that title!
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