By Matters India Reporter
Bengaluru, Nov. 1, 2021: Pope Francis on November 1 promoted Auxiliary Bishop Telesphore Bilung of Ranchi as the bishop of Jamshedpur.
The appointment was announced at 12 noon Rome time and its corresponding time 3:30 pm in India, says a press release from Father Stephen Alathara, deputy secretary general of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (Latin rite).
Bishop Bilung, a member of the Society of the Divine Word, has been serving as the auxiliary bishop of Ranchi from August 30, 2014. He was appointed Apostolic Administrator of Jamshedpur when its bishop Jesuit Felix Toppo was promoted as the Ranchi archbishop.
Ranchi is the capital of Jharkhand state and Jamshedpur is an industrial city in the same state.
Bishop Bilung was born on April 15, 1961, at Sargidipa in Rourkela diocese in Odisha, Jharkhand’s southern neighbor. In 1979, he joined the Jyoti Bhavan Minor Seminary in Sambalpur. In 1985, he entered the Society of the Divine Word and professed his first vows in 1986 and the final vows five years later.
He studied Philosophy and Theology at Jnana Deepa Vidyapeth in Pune from 1986 to 1992. He was ordained priest on May 2, 1992, in Gaibira, a parish under the diocese of Rourkela. He did a counseling course in Britain from 2005 to 2006.
He has served as assistant parish priest in Puri, Odisha, from 1992 to 1994 and as rector of the Minor Seminary in Sambalpur from 1994 to 1996. In 2005, he was made dhairman of the vocation board. In 2007, he joined as pastor in Premnagar, the Archdiocese of Calcutta. He was the provincial councilor from 2008 to 2011 and the rector of the SVD Minor Seminary in Lungai from 2010 to 2011. Since 2011, he has been the provincial of the Divine Word Missionaries.
On May 6, 2014, he was appointed the auxiliary bishop of Ranchi. He was ordained bishop on August 30, 2014, in Ranchi.
He has been a priest for 29 years and a bishop for 7 years.