SHILLONG: July 21, 2014 -- A legendary
theologian in northeast India died July 20 Sunday evening,
4.50 pm, at Woodland Hospital Shillong. Salesian Fr (Dr)
Sebastian Karotemprel succumbed to a fall he suffered on
Sunday 29 June. He was 83 years old. The funeral will be held
in Shillong, on July 23 at 1 p.m. His younger brother, Bishop
Gregory Karotemprel, will preside at the funeral.
Author of several books and keynote speaker at national and
international conferences, “Dr Karotemprel has left behind a
legacy of theological authenticity, academic rigour and
indefatigable labour,” says Salesian archbishop Dominic Jala
of Shillong, after paying homage to his diseased confrere in
the hospital.
Fr. George Malekal sdb, Provincial Superior of the Salesian
Province of Silchar to which Fr Karotemprel belonged, says,
“Fr Sebastian has left his own indelible mark on the Church
and society.”
The national president of the Conference of Religious India
(CRI) and the Salesian Provincial of Guwahati Fr V.M. Thomas
Vattathara describes Fr Karotemprel, “a legend of our times, a
loyal and committed Salesian, an erudite professor, an
institution builder, and an active collaborator in the major
missionary works in Northeast India.”
A member of the Salesian provinces of Guwahati and now of
Shillong, Dr Karotemprel was closely associated with some of
the major projects of the Salesians in Assam like the Don
Bosco Institute Kharguli and the Assam Don Bosco University
Guwahati.
Dr Sebastian Karotemprel was the first Dean of the Sacred
Heart Theological College Shillong which was re-opened in 1976
and professor of Theology of Mission at the Pontifical Urban
University, Rome, and served two terms as member of the
International Theological Commission.
He was also member of the Theological-historical Commission
for the Great Jubilee Year 2000.
In 2009, Dr Karotemprel’s former student professors at Sacred
Heart Theological College published a 300-page book of essays
in homage to the outstanding theologian entitled: Be my witnesses: essays in
honour of Dr. Sebastian Karotemprel, SDB.”
Fr Karotemprel was also former President of Sacred Heart
Theological College, Shillong where he taught for some 40
years. He was instrumental in building up the state of the art
modern library at the college and was responsible for the
infrastructure expansion of the college.
Besides setting up the seven storey Don Bosco anthropological
museum in Mawlai Shillong show-casing cultural artifacts of
the seven states of northeast India, Dr Karotemprel was the
founding editor of the first Indian Missiological Review. He
started it in 1978 and it continues under the name “Mission
Today”.
Retired Bishop Gregory Karotemprel of Rajkot is his younger
brother and his only sister is Adoration Sister Maria
Karotemprel, Provincial of SBAS, Ujjain Province.
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