By Purushottam Nayak
Partamaha, March 6, 2024: More than 25,000 people, who attended the annual feast of a Marian shrine associated with a Hindu woman in Odisha, have credited Mother Mary for the Vatican recognition of the Kandhamal martyrs.
Saraj Nayak, the secretary of the development committee of Partamaha Marian Shrine, says the Vatican approval for the Kandhamal martyrs was “a joyful and proud moment for us.”
“We thank Mother Mary interceding God for the Kandhamal martyrs who are now recognized as the Servants of God,” Nayak told Matters India.
In October 2023, the Vatican gave a go-ahead to start the beatification process for 35 people who were martyred for their faith during the 2008 anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal, a district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
Subash Digal, son of Lensa Digal, one of the Servants of God who attended the Partamaha feast this year, said he credits Mother Mary for the recognition of the Kandhamal martyrs.
The resident of Didrabadi, a substation of Simanbadi parish, recalled visiting the Partamaha shrine frequently with his father, who was a catechist.
Father Mukund Dev, the parish priest of Our Lady of Holy Rosary Daringbadi and a committee member of the Partamaha Marian shrine, said more than 25,000 pilgrims attended the March 5 feast. They included 50 priests and 25 nuns.
He told Matters India that the large number of people coming every year to the feast “tells us something special about Mary” and “helps us to give glory and praise to Jesus by living as his true and worthy disciples.”
Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, who led the feast day Mass, said in his homily that Mother Mary “comes to Partamaha every year to share our joys, sorrows, pain, agony, hope and aspirations.”
“Mother Mary knows our difficulties, hardship, obstacles and adversity therefore she could approach her son Jesus Christ our Lord,” said the Divine Word prelate who in October 2023 received the “no objection” from the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to initiate the process of beatification.
“Mother Mary teaches us the power of the presence of Our Lord Jesus amidst us which can make impossible into possible,” Archbishop Barwa asserted.
The shrine was built after Komoladevi, a Hindu widow went to Partamaha Mountain for firewood on March 5, 1994. She had a vision of a bearded man with long hair, who disappeared after some time. The widow then saw a woman dressed in white with a Rosary in her hands.
The woman told the widow to request the local Catholic priest to build a church for people to pray the Rosary for the sinners to repent. The neighbors laughed at her when she shared her experience with them.
Another day, a 12-year-old boy came to Komoladevi to ask her to go to the same mountain. When she went there the woman appeared and told her that she was Mother of Jesus and asked her to pray the Rosary daily.
Komoladevi shared her experience with Father Alphonse Baliarsing, the then vicar general of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar archdiocese, who set up a parish committee and built a grotto near a Banyan tree where Mother Mary had appeared.
He baptized the widow as Agnes, who died on March 27, 2020.