By Matters India Reporter
Bhopal: The Archdiocese of Bhopal has celebrated the birth centenary of late Archbishop Eugene D’Souza, who spurred evangelization in central India and led a strong Church response to the world’s worst gas disaster.
Archbishop Leo Cornelio of Bhopal led the centenary celebrations on November 15 attended by priests, religious and laity at St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral, Jehangirabad, Bhopal, capital of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Archbishop Cornelio hailed Archbishop D’Souza as a “vibrant prophet of the time” and legendary servant of society and the Church. “He was an intellectual man for the people but for God’s work. He was a wise man,” he added.
Retired Jesuit Archbishop Pascal Topno described Archbishop D’Souza, his predecessor, as “a man of compassion and love” who was an active member of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI). Archbishop D’Souza was a member of the CBCI Standing Committee, its decision making body, for more than 40 years. He was ordained a bishop in 1951.
Archdiocesan Public Relations Officer Father Maria Stephen said that late Archbishop D’Souza was intelligent and down to the earth person who continues to remain in the heart of people of Bhopal, the city of lakes. His relationship skills brought the people together far and wide and made known the Mission of the Church, he added.
Archbishop D´Souza died on March 18, 2003, at age 86. Hundreds of people, including Muslims and Hindus, had turned up for his funeral.
The then CBCI deputy secretary general Father Donald De Souza, noted that the late archbishop´s major service was in promoting evangelization in central India, where Christians comprise less than 1 percent of the people.
Late Archbishop Most Rev. Eugene D’ Souza was born on 15 November 1917. At the age of 34 he became the first Indian Bishop and later Archbishop of Nagpur. The then Papal Inter nuncio, Archbishop Leo Kierkels consecrated him on October 3, 1951.
He was transferred from Nagpur to Bhopal as its first archbishop in 1963. Under him the archdiocese of Bhopal gradually developed with many institutions, churches and religious personals.
Archbishop D´Souza, a member of the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales congregation, was credited with giving a new direction to evangelization in India when he invited the Oriental Catholic rites based in southern India to work in central India.
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The Catholic Church in India comprises three ritual Churches. The Latin rite follows the Roman liturgy that European missioners introduced in the 15th century, while the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara rites, both based in Kerala state, follow liturgies and customs with origins in Syrian Church tradition. Malabar and Malankara both mean “land of mountains,” referring to Kerala.
He supported the creation of Chanda, the first Syro-Malabar diocese outside Kerala, in 1962. He was the first Latin prelate to invite Oriental priests and Religious to work in Latin territory, giving “the right momentum to evangelization in this virgin land,” as one Latin prelate noted then.
Many senior priests working in central India the Church grew in central India is entirely due to the efforts of Archbishop D´Souza.
He also played a major role in helping victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy.
The leakage of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide Corporation´s pesticide factory in Bhopal on Dec. 3, 1984, killed more than 4,000 people and affected up to half of the 1 million people then living in the city.
Bhopal archdiocese under the late prelate’s leadership helped the administration organize free clinics, provide food and clothes to the victims, and clear piled up letters from post offices, the priest recalled. The archbishop even brought in cranes to clear animal carcasses lying scattered about the city, he added.