Indian Catholic bishops’ former leader dies

By Jose Kavi

New Delhi, July 10, 2024: Archbishop Emeritus Alphonsus Mathias, a Vatican II delegate who led the Indian Catholic Church in the tumultuous 1990s, died July 10 at Bengaluru’s St. John’s Medical College.

The death of the 96-year-old prelate occurred at 5:20 pm as he was undergoing treatment for old age-related ailments for the past few months, says a press statement from the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (Latin rite).

Details of his funeral are awaited.

Archbishop Mathias was the archbishop of Bangalore during 1986-1998 when the archdiocese faced a controversy over liturgical language. Earlier, he was the bishop of Chikmagalur in Karnataka for 22 years from 1964.

He was elected the president of the Catholic Bishops´ Conference of India (CBCI) on November 13, 1989. He succeeded Archbishop Benedict Mar Gregorios of Trivandrum, the first Oriental prelate to lead the conference comprising bishops of India’s three ritual Churches.

The CBCI elections held at Shillong, Meghalaya were in keeping with new statutes for the conference approved by the Vatican that stipulated that the three ritual churches should be members of the office bearers. Since then, the post of the CBCI president has been rotated among the three rites. Archbishop Mathias held the post for four years.

Archbishop Mathias was in the forefront to condemn the demolition of an ancient mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, by Hindu militants.

Regretting the vandalism and anti-religious act of demolition of a place of worship, he condemned what he called the “threat to secularism.”

Archbishop Mathias was born on June 22, 1928, as the fourth child of Diego Mathias and Philomena D’Souza at Pangala in South Canara district of Karnataka. He joined St Joseph Seminary, Jeppu, Mangalore in 1945. Within two and a half years he was sent to the Pontifical Seminary in Kandy, Sri Lanka where he studied Philosophy and Theology. He was ordained a priest on August 24, 1954, at Kandy.

His first appointment was the assistant parish priest of St Joseph’s Parish, Bajpe. A year later, he was sent to Rome in 1955 for higher studies in Canon Law and International Civil Law. He did his doctoral studies in Canon Law and International Civil Law from Urbanian University and Lateran University. He returned to Mangalore diocese in 1959 and served as secretary to Bishop Raymond D’Mello and as chancellor of the diocese.

At the age of 35, he was appointed as the first bishop of the newly created diocese of Chikmagalur in 1963 by Pope St. Paul VI.

He was appointed the Archbishop of Bangalore in September 1986. At the age 69, he retired from the ministry citing poor health.

He was the chairman of Bengaluru’s St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences during 1974-1982. He was credited with upgrading the institute as one of premier medical colleges in India.

He was the chairman of the Commission for Social Communications of the Federation of the Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC); president of Radio Veritas, Manila; a member of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications and the Council for Justice and Peace, Vatican.