By Santosh Digal
Bhubaneswar—The first Divine Word missionary from Kandhamal district of Odisha, the epicenter 2008 anti-Christian persecution, has opted to work Argentina, Pope Francis’ home country in Latin America.
Deacon Sanjib Bishoyi, a member of the Society of the Divine Word or SVD, hails from Adibanga village of Sacred Heart Parish, Kattingia in Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Archdiocese, Odisha, Eastern India. At present he is doing his diaconate ministry (as part of his seminary training to have apostolic experience) in the same home parish for about a year.
His father is a retired government elementary teacher and one of his elder brothers is a diocesan priest, Udayanath Bishoyi of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Archdiocese, who is the director of Pastoral Center in Kandhamal.
“I had options to be a missionary in Argentina or East Timor or another country. I am happy that SVD General Curia in Rome assigned me to be a missionary in Pope Francis’ home country,” Bishoyi said.
“Hailing from the land of anti-Christian persecution, Kandhamal, it is joy to go to Latin America as a missionary. I see it as God’s blessing. I pray that God will grant me the grace needed to be a good missionary with apostolic zeal, and work for God’s glory and spread the Gospel in that country with commitment and compassion,” he added.
The anti-Christian violence spearheaded by Hindu nationalists in 2007 and 2008 claimed nearly 100 lives, mostly Christians, and rendered more than 56,000 homeless. Several churches and Christians institutions in Kandhamal were also damaged in the violence triggered by the killing of a Hindu religious leader on August 23, 2008.
Bong in 1979, he did his elementary school education up to high school in his native place, college studies at Hilltop College at Mahana in Gajapati district of Odisha. Later he joined SVD congregation. After initial seminary formation, he did his philosophy in Bhopal of Madhya Pradesh and theology at Pune, Maharashtra.
He was ordained deacon on January 3, 2017. He is scheduled to be ordained by Divine Word Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar sometime in May 2018.
After his priestly ordination, he is set to travel to Argentina. “I am eagerly looking forward to my missionary work,” he said.
A couple of Indian SVDs are already working in Argentina for years.
The Society of the Divine Word (Latin: Societas Verbi Divini, abbreviated SVD), popularly called Verbites or the Divine Word Missionaries, and sometimes the Steyler Missionaries, is a missionary religious congregation was founded in Steyl in the Netherlands in 1875 by Saint Arnold Janssen.
In 1882, the Society started sending missionaries into China’s Shandong Province, where their aggressive methods were part of the chain of events that led to the Boxer Uprising in the late 1890s. In 1892, missionaries were sent to Togo a small country in west Africa. The Togo mission was particularly fruitful for by 15 years later the Holy See had appointed an Apostolic prefect. The Society’s third mission was to German New Guinea (the northern half of present-day Papua New Guinea).
In 1898 a fourth mission to be opened was in Argentina, a historically Catholic country where the Society quickly assumed responsibility for several parishes, schools and also seminaries in four dioceses: Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, La Plata and Paraná all of which are now archdioceses. In Argentina, Christianity is a major religion.
In 2014 was 125th anniversary of the arrival of the first SVD to Argentina (1889-2014). The SVD missionaries, Fr. Becher and Locken, arrived to Buenos Aires on October 23, 1889 and they took care of the German immigrants inside the country. These were times of popular missions, to detect these family groups living in colonies.
Besides, pastoral ministry, SVDs ventured in the field of education, seminary formation as pioneering work, later into biblical apostolate and communication.
If in the founding years there was a preponderance of missionaries of Saxon origin, especially Germans; in the second stage indicating consolidation of the mission, the staff becomes predominantly of Argentine people; with the Spaniards who have Argentine Lecturers in the years 1950-1960. And the big news, late 1990s until today, is the large influx of Eastern confreres from India, Indonesia, Vietnam, including Africa.