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News & Events

The Immaculate Conception Church, Pune often known as the mother church of the Deccan, is set to celebrate 225 years of its existence.

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Article from The Times of India

Oldest church to celebrate 225 years of service

TNN | Dec 8, 2016, 12.37 AM IST

PUNE: The Immaculate Conception Church, often known as the mother church of the Deccan, is set to celebrate 225 years of its existence from Thursday. The year-long festivities would begin on Thursday with a tableau and a live hymn band.

A look through the city’s history books reveals a fascinating array of land deals that went through before the church was constructed in the early 1790s.

Unlike most churches in the city Catholic or Protestant the City Church, of the Catholic sect, was thought of by Portuguese officer Dom Minguel de Noronha in the army of Peshwa Madhavrao.

Historians believe Dom Minguel de Noronha was possibly hired by Madhavrao Peshwa to strengthen his army. To show his appreciation for the Portuguese servicemen in his army, Madhavrao gave a parcel of land in the Quarter Gate area of the city, right at the edge of the Pune Cantonment, in 1791.

The church’s first services began on December 8, 1792. Today, the church offers services in English, Konkani, and Marathi, and most of its congregation are ethnic Goan or Mangalorean Catholics. The structure itself has gone through many changes over the years, including the addition of a school almost a century after the church congregated. Quite a lot of the original structure, however, is still standing tall.

“The inner halls and altar have mostly changed since the church’s establishment. But about half the building is probably 225 years old, which is the age of this church. We manage to keep this structure up using donations from our parishioners,” Rev Fr Salvador Pinto, the parish priest at the City Church, said.

The celebrations will be on till December 8, 2017. During this period, the church authorities have planned various charitable activities and feasts. The statue of Mother Mary is scheduled to go to various localities across the city and will return to the church only on November 28 next year.

“For Thursday, we have organised a tableau, where children will perform and depict the forming of the church over the years. There will also be a live band to sing hymns,” parishioner Elizabeth Coutinho said.

News & Events

Thumbs down for wedding gowns – Malankara Orthodox Church.

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Article from The Week

Thumbs down for wedding gowns

By Cithara Paul | December 01, 2016

Kerala-based churches are facing a sartorial crisis of sorts. With more brides shedding the traditional white sari for the wedding gown, they cannot seem to decide whether the western wedding gowns are Indian enough.

Though there is a general ban on wearing wedding gowns, various churches are independently issuing diktats against wearing gowns for weddings asking the brides to keep “propriety in mind’’ while choosing a wedding dress. The ecclesiastical orders generally ask the brides to keep the cultural aspect in mind.

One prominent church among them is the Malankara Orthodox Church in Parumala. The church has made it mandatory that the brides should wear sari for the wedding.

“We do not allow brides to wear western gowns for weddings here. We expect them to wear a sari and this ban has been on for quite some time,” Fr M.C. Kuriakose, manager of the Parumala seminary, told THE WEEK. He insisted that this decision should be seen in a cultural context.

The priest said that the managing committee decided to ban wedding gowns as it created a lot of unnecessary controversies. “Sari suits our cultural ethos and it is liked by everyone,” he said.

Another Jacobite priest, Fr George C. Kurian, felt that by wearing a deep neck or see through gown, the sanctity of marriage is being questioned. “It is disrespectful to both the church and Indian culture,” he said.

But, he insisted that the church is not against modernity. “It is just that we do not see western gown as a sign of modernity or sari as a sign of regressiveness. It is all about propriety,’’ added the priest.

It is learnt that the wedding gown became controversial when a priest admonished a bride who was apparently wearing a “gown with a deep neckline’’ for her wedding. He refused to conduct the wedding ceremony until the bride shed her gown and wore a traditional sari. The bride who had invested a fortune in the designer wedding gown was left with no option but to do what the priest had told her and the ceremony ended on a happy note.

This stand by the churches has nipped many a sartorial dreams in the bud.

“It was my long-time dream to see my bride in a gown. But she had to wear a sari to avoid any kind of uneasiness,’’ said Jatheesh Joy from Alappuzha.

But, not all are willing to budge.

“I have already bought a wedding gown at a very high rate. I am not going to buy a sari just because a few priests have failed to adapt to the changing times,” said Neha Sara, who is getting married in January.

There are some who feel the real issue is not the gown but its provocativeness. “If the bride wears a western gown with decent necklines and cut, no priest would stop her,’’ said Susan Bobby, who wore a gown for her wedding.

Some see the whole issue as symbolic of the Jacobite Church, which is caught in between the ‘Indian ethos’ and western influences.

“Jacobite and Orthodox churches are extremely conscious of its Indian identity. They are keener to retain their Brahminical lineage and Indian identity than the Catholics who look up to the Pope in Rome,’’ said Geevarghese Mathew, an academician who has studied about the Indianisation of Christianity.

Interestingly, the dress of the groom, which is normally a three-piece suit or the traditional kurta and mundu (dhoti), has not raised any eyebrows.

News & Events

Celebrating 100 years: From 12 families to 18,500 members, Orlem Church has come a long way.

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Article from Indian Express. 

Celebrating 100 years: From 12 families to 18,500 members, Orlem Church has come a long way

Church takes up beautification of 36 railway stations

Written by Benita Chacko | Mumbai | Published:December 11, 2016 1:41 pm

Built as a private chapel in 1880 by Father Joseph Braz D’Souza, the church is named after Our Lady of Lourdes. (Express photo by Ganesh Tendulkar)

IN THE last hundred years, the Orlem area in Malad has seen steady growth and development. From being a small residential neighbourhood of 12 families in 1916, it has now become a bustling area with restaurants, supermarkets, educational institutions and soaring real estate prices. And through all this time, Our Lady of Lourdes Church, or Orlem Church, has been silently witnessing this growth.

 

Built as a private chapel in 1880, by Father Joseph Braz D’Souza, in the area originally called Valnai, it was named after Our Lady of Lourdes. While in 1882 the chapel was affiliated to the church of Our Lady of Assumption, Kandivli, it was only in 1916 that it was given the status of a separate parish with Father D’Souza’s nephew Father Justin D’Souza becoming the first priest.

The current structure of the church was built in the late 1970s under the architect Raymond D’Lima’s supervision, who had also designed St Andrew’s Church in Bandra among some other important city buildings.

Lined with wooden panels, the inside of the church is well-ventilated and brightly lit. Sunlight beams onto the neatly-arranged benches through glass paintings covering the windows. While all the paintings have different scriptural references, the one at the main entrance of the church depicts the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes to a shepherd girl. In the courtyard stands the replica of the grotto representing the apparition.

According to popular beliefs among the Roman Catholics, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old girl in the cave of Massabielle, a place near Lourdes in France on February 11, 1858.

There were 17 other such apparitions that were reported through the year. While Soubirous was later canonised as a Catholic Saint, the church celebrates a mass in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes on the same day of her apparition every year and has marked February 18 as her Feast Day.

From a humble beginning of 12 families during its origin, today the church has around 18,500 members making it one of the biggest parishes in the city.

In Orlem, a school had also begun adjacent to the church, named St Anne’s School in the same year as the church.

“Our church is one of the few parishes in the city where the church and the school began together,” says Father Gilbert Delima, the current church priest.

Keeping up with the times, the school began offering international curriculum from this year onwards. “St Anne’s International School is the first IGCSE school affiliated to the Cambridge Board to be started by the Archdiocese of Mumbai,” he adds.

Malad station, the closest railway station from Orlem, was also established by the efforts of one of the parishioners of the church. A letter documents the fact that Joseph Braz D’Souza, a namesake of the church founder, pioneered the movement to create the Malad station around 1916.

As a fitting tribute in its 100th year, the church once again has contributed to the station by participating in the ‘Hamara Station, Hamara Shaan’ drive that worked towards beautification of 36 railway stations in Mumbai.

“Continuing the legacy of the church, 250 members of the church, including adults, youth and children, participated in the drive to paint the Malad station,” says D’Lima.

To mark a century of worship and service to the community, through the year the church participated in several outreach programmes with the objectives of fellowship, formation and service. As part of that, the youth will be soon visiting a leper home in the city to extend a helping hand to those ailing from the skin disease.

With Christmas just around the corner, the church also has a lot planned for the coming weeks from night vigils, where the believers will participate in worship services all through the night, to carol rounds and midnight masses for Christmas and New Year.

Have a comment or suggestion for Once Upon A Time? Write to mumbai.newsline @expressindia.com with subject line: Once Upon A Time

News & Events

Indian cloistered nun receives her doctorate in aerospace engineering.

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NEW DEHLI, India – A cloistered nun in India came out of her convent for an extraordinary reason: to attend a graduation ceremony for her doctorate in Aerospace Engineering.

“I had joined the religious order after my final oral exam last year, and this was the first time I came out after that. The rules of our order forbid us from going out of the convent, but I was given special permission to attend the convocation,” Sister Benedicta of the Holy Face told Matters India over the summer.

The 32-year-old nun lives in a cloistered convent of the Benedictine Sisters of the Reparation of the Holy Face.

Born in Kuwait before the Gulf War, Sister Benedicta studied at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai and then earned a Master’s degree in space science from Pune University, located 90 miles from Mumbai.

She earned her PhD from the Defense Institute of Advanced Technology in Pune. According to Matters India, her doctoral work in the field of aerospace engineering involved scramjet engines, which are used mainly for hyper-sonic vehicles and space vehicles.

Sister Benedicta had always felt a call to the consecrated life, but made the decision to become a nun after attending a spiritual retreat in Pune. She finished her doctorate studies before telling her family that she wanted to enter a cloistered convent.

The congregation of the Benedictine Sisters of the Reparation of the Holy Face was founded in 1950 by Venerable Abbot Hildebrand Gregory. In 1977, it became a pontifical congregation and has houses on several continents.

(Story from the The Catholic Register News Agency) through Fr. Valentine Rebello.