By Jose Kavi
New Delhi, March 26, 2023: Father Varghese Alengaden, founder of a holistic spiritual movement to transform India with the Gandhian principles and advocate of a new way of presenting Christ’s message, died March 26 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.
The death occurred at 9 am in Robert Nursing Home where Father Alengaden was brought from Medanta Hospital because of some post-surgery complications due to fluid formation in his lungs. He underwent a major open heart surgery on March 4.
The doctors were giving the needed treatment and closely monitoring his progress. He was on ventilator in ICU since March 24, says Carmelite Father Jacob Peenikaparambil, a close associate of Father Alengaden.
The doctors were planning for removal of the fluid but an internal bleeding started all of a sudden leading to cardiac arrest.
Father Alengaden was 70 and a priest for 41 years.
The funeral and burial will take place at 2 pm on March 28 at Cathedral Church Indore, the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh where Father Alengaden founded the Universal Solidarity Movement (USM) of Value Education for Peace, or USM, three decades ago.
Father Alengaden was born December 30, 1952, at Kallur village in Kerala’s Thrissur district. After his matriculation he came to Mission Home, a minor seminary in Palai, Kerala. Later he joined the Sagar diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church in Madhya Pradesh.
After his priestly studies at St Charles Seminary in Nagpur, he was ordained a priest on March 21, 1981. He then served as a parish priest of Sagar Cathedral for two years until 1983.
He served the Vidisha Mission during 1984-1986. He was appointed the director of youth for the Madhya Pradesh region, a post he held for four years from 1986.
He worked in Jaisingnagar mission in 1990. He founded the USM in 1993 and served as its director until his death.
Father Alengaden, who had long years of experience of working with the youth, visualized a country that could be rebuilt by the young people. He had trust and faith in the youth and applied the ‘possibility thinking’ of ‘why don’t we train the youth to take charge of the nation with an inclusive, broad and lasting vision?’
He launched the USM in response to the huge challenges India faced from communal politics, religious fundamentalism, ethnic conflicts, discrimination and rampant corruption that destroyed the country.
He wanted to create a new nation of love with people of all castes, creed and culture. For this, he suggested adopting the Gandhian principle of self-transformation, “You be the change.”
In his autobiography “Ho Jayega” (It will be done), Father Alengaden envisages by 2040 India to have 500 members of parliaments and 3,000 members of state legislative assemblies trained in USM and live by the USM way of ethical life.
Similarly, he dreams of 600 such people in the Indian Administrative and Indian Police Services. Some 100 such people in the Indian Foreign Service serve as Indian ambassadors and work for global peace.
Father Alengaden criticized the Church’s institutionalization that kept it away from authentic Christian witnessing. He urged the Church to find “new wineskin” or new ways to present Christ’s message in India.
For this, he wanted Christian educational institutions to promote a truly secular India. He urged them to start interfaith prayers during assemblies and boarding houses, display the preamble of Indian constitution in all the prominent places in the institution and class rooms and stop saying traditional Christian prayers since the majority of teachers and students are from other religions.
He wanted those institutions to organize alumni associations and create emotional attachment so the former students could defend them in difficult times. Another suggestion was to convert value education classes to leadership training with the values of the Constitution.
He wanted the Christian institutions to take parents into confidence by giving them motivational orientation to develop a partnership with our institution, and participate in the local meetings organized by other institutions and organizations.
In one of his articles on attacks on Christians, he wrote: “Unfortunately, many who are leading the campaign against the missionaries are those who were empowered by Catholic institutions. The Church personnel failed to train them to protect the Indian ethos enshrined in our Constitution.”
Christ, he said, had envisaged these troubles two thousand years ago. “He had also given solutions to face all kinds of troubles at all ages: “Put the new wine in new wineskin.”
He regretted that few retreat preachers or theologians gave practical ways of applying the method of ‘putting new wine in new wineskins’ in different ministries.
“Unfortunately the bishops, priests and religious failed to make use of the new wineskin methodologies. On the contrary, they continued to follow their ‘old wineskin’ ways. Now the old wineskin (old ways of working) is getting broken and wine is wasted. In other words, all their efforts based on the old ways are met with failure and opposition.”
Father Alengaden had also noted that “neither in their formation, nor in any of their meetings and retreats including crisis management meetings, do the Church people go to the root of the problems. Root of the anti-Christian propaganda and hatred have their origin in the aggressive and forced ways of evangelization the Christians had followed in the past with the support of colonial rulers.”
He was aware that many had criticized him for being “very negative towards the Church and its leaders.
“I express my views and reflections after analyzing various issues which block the mission of Christ. I make constructive criticism after experimenting and living as per the teachings of Christ over the last four decades,” he wrote.