By Matters India Reporter
Ranchi, Aug 5, 2020: The Daughters of St. Anne, the first congregation founded by a tribal sister for tribal girls in eastern India, will elect a new superior general during next general chapter scheduled for early September.
The current leader, Sister Linda Mary Vaughan, will complete 12 years in the post on September 6, 2020.
Vaughan, a member of the Karen Tribe of the Andaman Islands, was first elected in 2008 for a six-year term. She was reelected for the second term in 2014.
The 12th general chapter of the 123-year-old congregation will be held September 3 to 6, in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand state in eastern India.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, reporting of congregation’s 10 commissions, such as education, health, social work, projects and formation (training of future nuns), of the last six years and discussion on postulates has been canceled.
So only the election of the superior general and her four councilors will take place.
According to St Anne Sister Lalita Roshni Lakra, some 98 percent of the members of her congregation are tribals. Most of them come from states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and the Andaman Islands.
As of July this year, the congregation has 1,108 nuns working in 149 convents in India, Italy and Germany.
The congregation has given the first candidate for sainthood from India’s tribal Church. Mother Mary Bernadette Prasad Kispotta founded the congregation on July 26, 1897.
The nun, who is popularly known as Mother Bernadette, died of tuberculosis on April 16, 1961, at the age of 82. She was declared a Servant of God on Aug. 7, 2016, the first in the four-stage canonization process.
According to Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, retired archbishop of Ranchi, Bernadette’s congregation has provided “a great morale booster” for India’s indigenous people, who are considered inferior.
The first Asian tribal to become a cardinal, Toppo also pointed out that Bernadette started the congregation when foreign missionaries working in the region refused to admit tribal people to seminaries or convents.
The prelate cited an incident in 1912 when four tribal boys were sent to the papal seminary in the city of Kandy in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to become priests. The seminary superior sent them back, saying it would take another 100 years for tribal people to understand Christianity.
However, within a century, the tribal church has produced several bishops and a large number of priests and nuns. Toppo headed the Indian church as the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India from 2004 to 2008.
The cardinal pointed out that the congregation that Bernadette started for tribal girls defying opposition has flourished, with its members now serving other communities in India and overseas.