Bhubaneswar: Some new faces among missionaries serving the Universal Church come from a land that had witnessed Christian persecution a few years ago.

“Kandhamal priests now keep the Catholic faith burning in many countries. They have gone abroad after their faith was tested by fire,” says Fr. Ajay Kumar Singh, a human right activist and a Cuttack-Bhubaneswar archdiocesan priest.

At least 12 priests from Kandhamal district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the epicenter of Christian persecution in 2008, now work overseas in what is seen by Fr Singh and others as a reverse trend in Catholic missionary history.

Kandhamal, Fr Singh says, was the site of the largest and longest religious motivated attacks against Christian in modern Indian history.

More than 5,600 houses in 415 villages were looted and burned during the Kandhamal violence that began on August 24, 2008 and lasted four more months. The mayhem claimed more than 90 lives and reduced to ashes 395 churches and places of worship. Nearly 56,000 people became displaced and destitute.

Seven Kandhamal priests now serve in Europe while three are in Americas. One each is working in Oceania and Middle East.

The countries they serve are Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jerusalem, Spain, UK, USA, and Tonga. Two of them work as parish priests and seven serve as associate pastors. One Kandhamal priest is in social development, while two others are studying while doing pastoral work.

They have been overseas between one to nine years.

“It is our homage to the foreign missionaries who had planted the seed of faith in our land. It is time to pay back and share our faith,” Father Singh, a native of Kandhamal, told Matters India.

The bearded priest, who has helped highlight the plight of Kandhamal survivors at international forums, says the violence did shake and shock the faith of Christians of his native place but they used the persecution to show to the world how to witness Christian faith in hostile environment. The violence has helped purify the priests with blood, he added.

Father Sudhir Kumar Christodas Nayak, one of the Kandhamal priests serving overseas, says the mission brings lots of joys and challenges. “The face and fate of the Catholic Church here is different from that of my own country India. The churches are gigantic but it’s empty,” the Sacred Heart priest, who has been the parish priest of Our Lady of the Assumption, Fall River Diocese in the United States since 2013, told Matters India.

According to him, his most challenging task as a pastor is to reach out to the inactive member of the church. “I have good number of faithful in my parish for all three Masses on Sundays but most of them are elderly. It is hard to imagine the situation of the Catholic faith in this country a few years from now.”

The Indian priest says he is also seeking ways to draw younger generation for faith-formation classless.

“I am happy to get support from the lay faithful in different ministries of the church. I am hopeful that my parish community would be able to reach out more and more people to bring them back to church to practice their Catholic faith,” he added.

Another Kandhamal missionary, Benedictine Father Upendra Digal works in the parish of Nostra Signora di Czestochowa, Rome, Italy. He says his focus is the growth of the faith of people entrusted to him.

Ordained in 2003, Fr. Digal hails from Our Lady of Charity parish, Raikia, Kandhamal. Prior to his assignment in Rome, he worked in many places in undivided Andhra Pradesh.

Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary Father Francis Subal Chandra Nayak, has been working as outreach project coordinator of Caritas Tonga for more than two years, He finds the people in the Polynesian island nation God-fearing. “Faith plays a major role in their life. Life is simple and peaceful,” he adds.

The native of Our Lady of Rosary Parish, Daringbadi, Kandhamal, says Tonga’s “clean atmosphere and nature around gives me serenity and joy. My life here has been good and filled with satisfaction.”

Fr Balakrishna Singh, another Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary priest, is assistant pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Acton, Archdiocese of Westminster, London, since 2014. He says, “It has been a unique experience serving in this multicultural and multiracial parish.”

His confrere Father Manoj Kumar Nayak, who also hails from Kandhamal’s Daringabadi village, has been serving at Sacred Heart parish Edinburg TX in Brownsville diocese of United States since November 2012.The parish also has some 1,200 children for the catechism classes. “Generally, people here are devoted to their faith though things are changing now. People are warm and active. It is a blessing for me to be here.”

“The parish has more than 5,000 families. On weekends we have seven Masses in Spanish and English. We get almost 3,500 Mass attendants on the weekend Masses,” says Fr Manoj, one of the three priests attached to the parish.

Four of those overseas priests are from Cuttack-Bhubaneswar archdiocese. The Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary has four priests, followed by the Congregation of Missions two. The Order Discalced Carmelites (OCD) and Order of Sylvestrine Benedictine Benedictines has one priest each.

It is not just priests who are serving the global Church. At least 12 nuns from Kandhamal are working in Asia, Europe and the US.

The Catholic faith was brought to Cuttack–Bhubaneswar by French missionaries of St. Francis de Sales, or Fransalians. They set up parishes and took care of the pastoral needs of the region. However, most French missionaries returned to their homeland during the First World War. A group of Spanish Vincentian priests (Congregation of Mission or CM) replaced them in 1922.

The diocese of Cuttack was part of the diocese of Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) since 1845.

On July 18, 1928, Pope Pius XI declared Cuttack as a self governing independent mission territory and appointed Vincentian Father Valerian Guemes as its administrator and later as the ecclesiastical superior. In 1937, the Cuttack Mission was elevated to a diocese and made a suffragan of Ranchi archdiocese. The following year, Pope appointed Vincentian Father Florencio Sanz Esperanza as its first bishop.

In 1974, the Cuttack Mission was divided into the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar archdiocese and Berhampur diocese. Monsignor Henry D’Souza was appointed the first archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar.

During the Kandhamal violence, the archdiocese was led by Divine Word Archbishop Raphael Cheenath. On his retirement, another Divine Word prelate John Barwa was made the archbishop in 2011.

The archdiocese comprises nine civil districts of Odisha — Boudh, Cuttack, Kandhamal, Kendrapara, Khurda, Jagatsingpur, Jajpur, Nayagarh and Puri.