Port Blair: Church workers in Andamans and Nicobar have decided to build toilets for families, provide scholarship to children and avail drinking water to more than 350 inhabited villages in the archipelago.
Some 110 priests and nuns working in 15 parishes of Port Blair diocese met recently in Port Blair to study the Church social teachings and seek ways to translate them into actions. The diocese covers 349 islands spread over around 8,250 square kilometers in the Bay of Bengal.
The participants of the seminar on social ministry have also decided to conduct awareness programs for the villagers. They will help form Self Help Groups at parish level and train women and youth to assert for their rights.
The September 19-22 seminar noted lack of proper houses and sanitation in towns and villages and poor transportation facility as the major challenges facing nearly 400,000 people in the archipelago.
The villagers also do not have title deeds for their land.
The participants noted that the mixed people from different parts of mainland now live in the archipelago. Since they have no land of their own, they have built their houses on an encroached land. Some have neither house nor documents of that land they live.
Capuchin Father Charles Irudayam, the main resource person for the seminar, stressed the need for recognizing and respecting the dignity of every human. The former executive secretary of the Commission for Justice, Peace and Development under the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India urged the participants to read the signs of time as they try to chalk out a road map for social activism.
He urged them to engage in dialogue with people at social, political, economic and cultural level. Catholic social teachings stress that any plan of action should follow discernment arising from proper study and analysis of the situation.
Fr Irudayam quoted Pope Paul VI to note that development is a movement from less human conditions to better conditions. “In this development process the Catholic social teachings stress the dignity of the person, common good, universal destination of goods, subsidiary, participation and solidarity.
The priest also helped the Church workers to analyze current situation in India that still struggles to bridge the rich-poor gap. They also studied India’s new education policy and its economic, social and political systems and how they impact their work in the archipelago.
Fr Irudayam, one of the 1,000 priests selected as Ambassadors of Mercy by Pope Francis, urged the priests and nuns to understand better the psychology of the poor and the root cause of underdevelopment and seek Christian responses to them.
They were also encouraged to mobilize grassroots group and join people’s movements to bring about a just and egalitarian society.