By Matters India Reporter
Bhubaneswar, Jan 22, 2025: Bhubaneswar is all set to welcome the country’s Latin rite bishops, who will come to the capital city of Odisha, an eastern Indian state, for their annual plenary assembly.
As many as 204 members of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) are scheduled to address the theme, “Discerning Pathways for Synodal Mission” during the January 28-February 4 gathering at the Xavier Institute of Management University.
The university and the archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar are hosting the assembly that will begin with a solemn Mass led by Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, Apostolic Nuncio to India and Nepal.
The first three days of the assembly will be dedicated to spiritual conversations, offering a retreat-like atmosphere for the bishops to reflect on the ten priorities outlined in the Working Document, says a press statement issued by Father Stephen Alathara, the conference’s deputy secretary general.
Jesuit Father Joe Xavier, director of St. Joseph’s Institute of Management at Thiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, is expected to facilitate these sessions of discernment.
Accompanying him will be Father Christopher Vimalraj, Jaison Vadassery, Gilbert Delema, and Yesu Karunanidhi, who will present ten priorities of the working document. The outcome of the reflections will later be synthesized and presented to the assembly for the approval of a final document and an action plan for the Church in India, the statement said.
The assembly will also discuss the biennial reports of the conference’s 16 commissions, six departments, four apostolates and 14 regional bishops’ councils. “These sessions will provide an opportunity to evaluate the Church’s mission and address its challenges in contemporary India,” the January 21 statement said.
The assembly is expected to approve the revised Tamil Ritual for Baptism and Confirmation, presented by the Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council, and the Gujarati Missal, to be presented by Archbishop Thomas Macwan of Gandhinagar.
The assembly will review and finalize the conference4’s revised statutes, prepared by its Canon Law Commission. It will also address the request to elevate the San Thome Shrine in Mount St. Thomas, Chennai, Tamil Nadu’s capital.
On February 2, conference president Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrão, Archbishop of Goa and Daman, will lead a public Mass at the university auditorium. Later that evening, the delegates will make a pilgrimage to the Pro-Cathedral of St. Vincent in Bhubaneswar.
The assembly is expected to be a landmark event for the Catholic Church in India, offering an opportunity for reflection, collaboration, and renewal as the Church discerns its path forward in mission and synodality, the statement added.
Until Pope St. John Paul II’s first visit to India in 1986, all the bishops of the country’s three ritual Churches – Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara – were under the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. In a letter of May 28, 1987, the Pope asked the bishops of each Rite to have their own episcopal bodies. The larger conference now addresses national and supra-ritual matters.
The bishops of the Latin Church started their conference at their annual meeting in 1988 and named it “Conference of Catholic Bishops of India – Latin Rite” (CCBI-LR). In January 1994, the Vatican approved its statutes.
The conference accounts for 132 of India’s 174 dioceses. It had 16,685,623 members in 2023, according to its website. They lived in more than 9,360 parishes and mission stations, served by 10,982 diocesan and 9,897 religious priests and 60,537 nuns and more than 2,000 Brothers.