By Matters India Reporter

Kozhikode, Oct. 24, 2018: Father Kurien Kunnumpuram, a renowned Jesuit theologian who encouraged generations of Indian priests and nuns to cultivate personal experience of God, died on October 23 after a brief illness at Kozhikode, Kerala. He was 87.

His funeral is scheduled for 11 am on October 25 at Christ Hall in Calicut, the headquarters of the Kerala Jesuits.

The end came at 10:30 pm in Nirmala Hospital, managed by the Ursulines Mary Immaculate in Calicut. He had a fall and developed a blood clot in brain and underwent neurosurgery at Baby Memorial Hospital. He was in comma since September 25.

“He had suffered a minor stroke on November 17, 2017, but had recuperated well at our hospital,” Ursuline Sister Linnet Devasia, a senior staff nurse, told Matters India on October 24.

Father Kurien, as he is popularly known, had contributed in the field of ecclesiology, particularly with regard to Vatican II. He taught 44 years as the member of the academic staff of the faculty of theology at one of the top seminaries in India, Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune.

Sister Devasia said the Jesuits admirers had organized October 17-18 a national seminar at Kozhikode on “Kurien’s Contribution to Indian Theological Vision.”

Father George Mutholil, Kerala Jesuit provincial, who opened the seminar, described Father Kurien as someone who had challenged him to grow.

He saw Father Kurien’s life and writings as a challenge “to priests to practice a spirituality of active involvement in the lives of people and to practice an integrated spirituality – integrating life, prayer and work, instead of ‘scattering their energies in many directions.

“As a scholar and mentor he had a way of accepting everyone personally and encouraging them to grow,” Father Mutholil told the national seminar that hailed Father Kurien as one of the pioneering theologians of Vatican II who was internationally recognized as a thinker and writer of eminence.

Father Kurien was born on July 8, 1931, at Teekoy in Kottayam district of Kerala. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1950 and was ordained a priest in 1963.

He completed his doctorate in Systematic Theology in 1968 from the University of Innsbruck on “Ways of Salvation.” He started teaching at the Pune Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth from the following year.

He was the dean of the Vidyapeeth’s faculty of theology during 1974-1977 and became its rector ten years later, a post he held for six years.

In 1998, he founded Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies. He also edited and published it.

Bishop Thomas Dabre of Pune led a Mass on July 6, 2011, to mark Father Kurien’s 80th birthday.

In 2013, he returned to his mother province Kerala residing at Calicut.

He edited Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies from 1998 to 2010. He was also the founding editor of JDV’s Encyclopedia of Indian Christian Theology, until 2009. He was editing an Asian Journal of Religious Studies at the time of his death.

Father Kurien visualized the Church as a community of faith and hope. He was optimistic about God’s ever-growing presence in the world.

Faith in God is the foundation of his theology. This faith was based on his personal experience of God, and not on the rational arguments for the existence of God. Besides, he found faith in God quite meaningful. For only God “meets the deepest longings of the human heart which is never fully satisfied with what this world can offer,” he once wrote.

Father Kurien also held that God’s saving work is based on love. As Vatican II has stated, God in His goodness and wisdom chose to reveal Himself and his plan of salvation. “Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to humans as friends and lives among them, so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.”.”

For a casual observer the Church is just a social reality – an association of human beings who profess a common faith, who participate in a common worship and who endeavor to live by a common ethical code. But for believing Christians the Church is also a faith reality. There is a grace-filled depth to the Church, the theologian had said.