austraLasia
1464
The Bishop of the
mighty Brahmaputra
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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