Bishop leads construction of house for paralytic villager

By Jessy Joseph

New Delhi, May 23, 2020: A Catholic bishop in a southern Indian diocese has set an example of social responsibility even during the lockdown.

Bishop Prince Antony Panengaden of Adilabad in Telangana state rushed to Mittapally, a village in the Mancherial district, when he heard that a fire had destroyed the house of Shankarayya, a paralytic and father of nine.

The fire incident occurred on May 19 and the bishop came to know it the following day when he called the residents of Mittapally as part of his pastoral duty of inquiring about his faithful.

The village has only ten Catholic families and the bishop visits them often.

Bishop Panengaden knew Shankarayya, the father of six girls and three boys, could not go for work because of his physical disability. The family survives on the earnings of the sons, who are daily wagers.

On May 20 itself, the prelate visited the village, 18 km away from his residence, to study Shankarayya’s condition.

On his return from Mittapally, the prelate formed a team of priests, youth and other villagers to help Shankarayya.

“Fire incidents are common in those villages mainly due to the faulty electrical wiring,” Bishop Panengaden told Matters India over phone on May 24.

He said he formed the team as the diocese has no funds to build the house. He then suggested the team to help Shankarayya through physical work.

“Our diocese has no money, so we can’t provide any monetary help to people. What we could do is to help them through our physical work,” he added.

The bishop went with his team to the village in the early morning of May 22 and started the house’s foundation work. Besides the bishop, the team comprised five priests, seven young people and a few local villagers.

Since Telangana now experiences severe summer, the team work from 6 am to 11 am. “We start the work early due to the scorching heat,” the bishop explained. The villagers in the team continue the work until evening.

The team finished the foundation work within two days. “It will take another week to complete the house,” the bishop explained.

Building materials likes bricks, stone and sand are locally available and the panchayat (village council) has agreed to give cement, iron rods and asbestos sheets, Bishop Panengaden explained.

“The youth and my driver will carry out the masonry and welding works. Some of them are expert in those works, so we don’t have to pay for workers,” the prelate added.

The bishop’s humanitarian work came to light through a video clip circulated on social media platforms. The video shows the bishop wearing worker’s dress and digging the foundation for the house with iron rods.

Bishop Panengaden, who took over as the second bishop of Adilabad Syro-Malabar diocese on August 6, 2015, said he and his team followed all lockdown rules while constructing the house.

Earlier, the prelate had made headlines with services to migrant labors passing through his diocese. His diocese served food and accommodation for some 4,500 migrant labors since the lockdown that started on March 25 to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The video showed the prelate having meals with migrant workers under a banyan tree. The media in Telangana has highlighted such activities.

The prelate, who turned 44 on May 13, said the diocese accommodated in the school owned by the diocese all the migrants who were walking towards their home town.

The diocese put a sign board in Hindi and its people along with the bishop waited near the highway to lead the walking migrants to the school.

Bishop Panengaden also arranged vehicles for the migrants.

“Once we got the permission from the local police, we did not allow any migrants to walk. Those who come in small groups wait in the school for others then we ferry them in trucks,” he explained.

“We not only provided water, food and accommodation to them but arranged vehicles to ferry them up to the border. We have no permission to go beyond the border,” he added.

The bishop approached his benefactors and friends for funds to support the migrants and they helped him to provide facilities to the migrants.

Bishop Panengaden, a native of Arimpoor village in the Thrisssur district of Kerala, southern India, speaks fluent Telugu, the local language. The former seminarian of the Carmelite of Mary Immaculate then joined the mission eparchy of Adilabad.

After philosophical and theological studies at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Bangalore (now Bengaluru) and Ruhalaya Seminary at Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, he was ordained a priest on April 25, 2007.

After the ordination, he served at the Adilabad Cathedral Church as assistant parish priest and at Saligaon Parish as its priest. He holds a doctorate in Biblical Theology from the Urbanian University, Rome.

At the time of his appointment as the bishop, he was serving the diocese as its vicar general and the cathedral vicar.

Adilabad is one of the 13 Telugu Catholic dioceses. The diocese reaches out to former Maoist-infested areas with services such as education, social justice, medical care. It manages hospitals, dispensaries, and tribal hostels.