To
His Grace Vincent M.
Concessao
Archbishop of
Your
Grace,
Greetings
of Peace and Hope from Fr. Jose Edassery
By
this time, I hope, Your Grace is aware of the happenings in connection with the
celebration of Sunday Mass on last Sunday (23rd September), which
was widely covered by the print and mass media. I am really hurt by the way it
has been publicized.
I
would like to draw your attention to the background in which the decision to
celebrate the Eucharist was taken. For the last eight obligatory days, as Your
Grace know for certain, there was no Syro-Malabar Mass for the faithful of St.
Augustine’s Parish which they enjoyed for the last fifteen years
uninterruptedly as a Syro Malabar Mass Centre. On my coming back, I understood
the great effort done by Your Grace to solve the problem by dialoguing with the
priests of St. Michael’s Parish and the Parish councillors which was ultimately
fruitless. Bishop Thomas Chackiath told me about the helplessness Your Grace is
facing while interacting with the incardinated priests of the Archdiocese.
On
coming back from my foreign trip I knew from my priests, that they were never
given a chance to meet Your Grace together to share their feelings and
difficulties even after repeated requests and they are really dejected. For
myself, I am in a fix not knowing what to do to solve the problem both for our
parish priest, Fr. Reju and for the people. The people started interacting with
me very strongly and they even said we have almost lost our faith in Bishops
and priests, because, ‘nobody is concerned with the fulfilment of our Sunday
obligation by arranging mass for us’. I also understood the undercurrent among
the people that they are preparing for an outburst perhaps in an unchristian
way with the Bishop’s house and with the priests of St. Michael’s Parish. My
first effort was to console the newly installed parish priest, Fr. Reju of
My
second effort was to console the people and to make them cool down by finding
out one or many alternate places for celebrating Sunday Holy Mass within the parish
boundary. For this I interacted with Fr. George Manimala and asked for his
suggestion. He told me, and supported me, to find out places for Sunday mass.
Even with some of his own suggestions I looked for a hall in the famous school
–
The
news about the Sunday mass in the hall reached the press through certain people
and on Sunday morning they came to the place of worship. On seeing them I told
them publicly ‘don’t publicise these, as it is only a temporary arrangement’.
They agreed with me, but as I understand now they, on their own, prepared some
distorted versions and took some clips of photos after the mass and gave their
own interpretations to the media as if we were celebrating mass in the temple
and not in the banquet hall. When the media people approached me after the
mass, I told them plainly that this crisis is due to some misunderstanding
within a small group of people and the authorities are after it to solve the
same and hope within a few days, it will be solved. This message they had aired
in one of the channels.
I
participated in the parish general body meeting after the holy mass, which was
chaired by the parish priest, and asked for suggestions to continue the Sunday
Mass in two or three places. But they all unanimously said, ‘we want to come
and worship as one community on Sundays, and on a temporary basis we would like
to continue in the same place and asked us to request to the Archdiocese to
grant a place and time in the parish church / basement / St. Michael’s
Auditorium or St. Michael’s Ground. The second subject we discussed was the
formation of the parish council, which was pending for the last two months. The
community authorised Fr. Reju, the parish priest, to nominate an ad hoc council
considering the different areas of the parish for the time being. The third
agenda was conducting catechism for around 60 students whose list was already
collected. As they have already lost two months, we had the first meeting of
the students on the same day itself and promised them to start catechism on the
coming Sunday in the same place by using the first floor of the building. Books
and other materials will be distributed next Sunday. Finally as September 23rd
Sunday was the last day for registration for Santhome Fest competitions we
explained the details of the same to the people and encouraged people of all
age groups to give their names for the various competitions.
Finally
I would like to bring your notice that we never planned anything to disgrace
the honour of the archdiocese in whatsoever way about the crisis at St.
Michael’s Church. Whatever has come through the media is without our
endorsement. We are still patiently waiting for your intervention to resolve
the issue by bringing all concerned around the table for a dialogue or by an
appropriate order for the same.
Fr.
Jose Edassery
Coordinator
CC.
1.
Mar Varkey Cardinal Vithayathil
2.
Mar Gratian Mundadan
3.
Rev. Fr. George Manimala, the Episcopal Vicar
4.
Fr. Reju Kannampuzha, Parish Priest,