Jesus established His church

To 20th November 2008
Most Rev Abp Oswald Gracias
Archbishop of Bombay, Archbishop's House,
21-Nathalal Parekh Marg,
Mumbai - 400 001.
Maharastra
Tel (O): (022) 22 02 10 93, 22 02 11 93
22 02 12 93
Fax (O): 22 85 38 72

Your Eminence,
Sub: Seeking - ( i ) Intervention to eradicate Religious Oppression in Dharavi Parish and
( ii ) implementation of Liturgical Rights & Needs

THE BACKGROUND

Historical Perspective: Mumbai, the commercial city is the capital of Maharshtra state in India. Since Mumbai is commercial city, people from all over India have come over have as settlers. i.e. Goans , Mangaloreans, Tamilians (State of Tamilnadu), Malayalees (State of Kerala) and many others.
Tamil Language: Tamil is one of the Ancient Languages spoken among the Tamil People most commonly spoken in the Diocese of Tamilnadu State in India i.e. In the Dioceses of Palayamkottai, ChengalPat, Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Dindugul, Nagercoil, Thanjavur, Kumbakonam, Salem, Sivagangai, Thuckalay, Tiruchirapalli, Tuticorin, Vellore, Archdiocese of Pondicherry, Madurai and Mylapore and a few Congregations in Tamilnadu State.
Tamil Population In Mumbai City: The Population of Tamil Catholics in Mumbai exceeds more than a lac in the Archdiocese of Mumbai. We never differentiate catholic believers by their Caste or Creed. We adopt brotherly relation with all the Catholics in the Parish.
St. Anthony Church in the Archdiocese of Mumbai: Dharavi though one of the oldest settlements of the Tamils the biggest slum in Asia, was takeover by the Archdiocese of Mumbai in the year 2000 and was originally established in the early 1900. Tamil Catholics in this Parish exceeds 1300 Tamil families and 95 Marathi families and 15 family others. However the Diocese has been continuously appointing Goan and Mangalorean as Parish Priest and Assistant Parish Priest, and the Masses are celebrated by these Priest are in English and Hindi, where 90 % of the Tamilians don’t speak or understand neither English nor Hindi. The Church contributes the Diocese approximately Rs.60,000 to Rs.75,000 per month through various contribution by the Parishioners . Also the recent Church Building budgeting Rs. One Crore was also contributed only by the Parish People. (Ref: Church Foundation Stone)

REASON & COMPARISION
With what happened in USA on the Presidential election, The whole world needs to rethink of Jesus’ Words: ‘Be one as my Father in Heaven and I are one’! Obama’s election to the President of USA has certainly implemented the same. We also heard Mr. Obama echoing the value of equality saying that we are all Americans, no black or no white. His election to be the new US President resounds Jesus’ value of equality as quoted by Indian Pro-nuncio in his letter to us: ‘no Jew, no Greeks, all are one in Jesus Christ'.

Certainly it is a surprise that the secular society or lay society in the world like American society has taken the value of equality so seriously. Now it is a dream into a reality.
What about response to the same value of equality among the Catholics! How much more Jesus’ appeal for equality should be resounded in daily lives of every catholic in the whole world! Even after 2000 plus years, there is only preaching but not reaching to the implementation of the value of equality!
With this above mentioned words about the appreciation of what had happened in US or what is not happening among the Catholics, we are not generalizing the same matter. However we want to draw the attention of Your Eminence to our problem which we have already raised and briefed in our previous contacts.

Your Eminence,
We all believe and stand by the trust and hope we have in Your Eminence on our matter. We approach Your Eminence again because we are denied again and again even to approach our local authority regarding our age old problem. For instance, we have been told by the Archdiocesan authority to take an appointment with your Eminence after 29th October.
We contacted the Mumbai Archbishop’s House for the same. But the new Secretary, Fr. Neil Santos, was interacting with us shouting that 'you all don't use the language card'! What a surprise and insult for us! We have already been affected by such inhuman and indifferent attitude of the authority in the Parish; but now again the same is repeated from the Secretary who is supposed to be the sincere link between the people and the local authority & this is the kind of situation with the youngest Priest, as we heard about him, unto the eldest Priests!

Where is the point of playing a language card?

Don't we have a right to request and be heard by the Archbishop? Is it the way a responsible person should interact with the Parishioners? Would he do the same with the non-Tamil Speaking Parishioners in the same way? A biased and prejudiced mind with such Priest as a Archdiocesan Secretary certainly proves how low we the Tamil Speaking Parishioners are being treated or taken for granted. Where is value of equality here for us?
With much argument, later we were told to do two things:
Wait for completion of Cardinal's rest as required for his better health.
1. Or you can meet Bishop Bosco Penha as he is presently In-charge, in the absence of Cardinal Oswald.
On these two options, we are left helpless because we didn’t want to disturb your Eminence, our Cardinal, until His Eminence recovers fully as we also have been praying for. We don't want anything, with the second option, to do with Bishop Bosco of whom we have already registered to your Eminence about his biased and insincere attitude towards the Tamil speaking Parishioners.
With all these in and around kind of situation, we have decided not to do either of these, though we have tremendous respect for our Cardinal who really showed his inner side. But there is something so powerful against the Tamil speaking in the rank and file that nothing is coming up on the issue of our request despite our Cardinal's good gesture. Fortunately we noticed in the Examiner about your Emincene's come back to the Office. We write to your Eminence expressing our needs.
Our need is very simple and serious and the delay has been for unjustly too long. Why is it not possible to do the Justice for us. That is why we approach Your Eminence for further consideration.

I. Follow Up
With the brief as afore-mentioned, Your Eminence, we the people of Dharavi Parish need to request for a sincere follow up of our matter. Otherwise, the matter is just thrown out without any serious consideration at all.
Our need is very urgent but very simple: It is very easy to appoint a Tamil speaking Priest as Parish Priest in our Parish. We do have at least four Archdiocesan Priests who are appointed in most of the Tamil populated Parishes and one more will be ordained in 2009 March. Where as, in our Parish where the majorities are Tamil speaking as Parishioners about 6500 members (1300 families1), the situation is not yet ripe to give us a Tamil Speaking Parish Priest or could not find any of Priests as per the choice of some influential Priests or other compulsion. That shows that our needs depend on the need or priority of the authority not on serious & pastoral need, depite Your Emincence's kind concern and prompt consideration.
In our previous letter to Your Eminence, we have already highlighted our needs besides the request for the Tamil Speaking Parish Priest. Hereunder we reproduce our needs:
1. We need a Tamil Parish Priest to Lead the Parish Council Meeting in Tamil, as we don't understand any other languages.
2. We the Parishioners of St. Anthony Church require Mass in Tamil on Special Obligation Days like Christmas, New Year, Holy Week Services, All Souls Day, Easter and Feast Celebration.
3. We require Children Mass to be held in Tamil also besides the English one.
4. Recognition of Tamil Catholic Sabha in the Archdiocese of Mumbai and appointment of a Auxiliary Bishop or an Episcopal Vicar for the Tamil Catholics in Mumbai since we are more than 1.5 Lac Tamil Catholics in Mumbai.
5. Respective Masses needs to be held in all the Chapels.
Hence the follow up is also very simple: It is very clearly simple and clear that our need can easily be followed up. Why then the delay is on? What exactly the reason for such indifferent attitude towards us, the Tamil Speaking Parishioners?
II. Expectation
There is nothing an unjust expectation from us. This is simply as it is followed in the Archdiocese in case of general appointments. The need of the majority of language speaking among the Parishioners, in the Parish, has been mostly the criteria for appointing the Parish Priest. If so, what is the problem for the local authority to appoint a Tamil Speaking Parish Priest in our Parish.
We also understand that the missionaries once upon a time had brought the Priests from Goa only to take care of the spiritual care of the local Christians as well as the Christians among the Portuguese who were in Bombay! Today, the non-Tamil speaking Parishioners or Priests, (other than the locals - the Marathi Speaking Catholics who are now less than the Tamil Speaking Parishioners in numbers), who came from outside like us (Tamil speaking Parishioners), have no gratitude to help the rest of the Catholics, like us. Those who came to help the local ministry have come up to the main stream. But they don't reciprocate to us, the Tamil speaking parishioners, what the missionaries had done to them.

III. Further Observation
Like what had happened in US regarding the equality, something has happened in Mumbai itself on the issue of rights of linguistic people. For your information, the situation in secular Mumbai is very clearly known regarding the migration problem among the secular people.
• There is a growing opinion among some of the politicians that the outsiders should be kept out in Bombay. We immediately hear opposition from all over India that Bombay is part of India and Indians from any states of India can reside anywhere in India including Bombay.
• Each one has the equal right and rank irrespective of language, caste, creed and colour.
• Imagine if the society in India is accepting the need for the care of all outsiders in Bombay in a secular sense, how much then it has to be reciprocated from each other as Catholics in Bombay.
• No one can be discriminated by anybody as a human being. How much could then anyone discriminate as Catholics?
‘The one who has the heart and act of discrimination can not be a human being; and hence such persons can never be also CHRISTIANS in whom we see CHRIST than anything else. Respect for the locality and local culture can never be compromised but at the same time the value of equality is also to be preserved’.
In our case, it is not a secular appeal. It is a religious appeal with request for the freedom of language in the Parish. If it is race problem or caste problem somewhere, it is language problem in our Parish.
• It is taken for granted that only those who are from Goa and Mangalore are to be in the mainstream of the Archdiocese. This thinking is in no way less than the Politicians who are playing on the cards of fanaticism, selfishness. We all need to get out of such thinking and live as true followers of Christ.
• How many Priests are in Bombay Archdiocese from the Tamil Speaking Community? There are almost 1, 50, 000 Tamil Speaking Catholics in the whole of the Archdiocese.
• Whereas, there are number of Priests and Bishops only from community of Konkanni speaking either from Goa or Mangalore? All were settled here in Bombay from respective states like Goa, Karnataka, Kerala except people from Tamilnadu.
• But why has there to be such discrimination that Tamil Speaking people are not in the main stream in the Parish or in the Archdiocese?
There are also some Parishes in Bombay Archdiocese, like Our Lady Of Lourdes, Orlem; Our Lady Of Rosary Church, Goregaon West; St. Antony Church, Tembipada; Our Lady Of Good Health Chapel, Cheetacamp (belongs to Mankurd Parish), etc., where the services on Christmas, New Year, Holy Week, Easter, Parish Feast Celebrations are all conducted in Tamil by Tamil Speaking Priests. Dharavi, our Parish, is totally different from these Parishes which don’t have tight population of Tamil speaking as much Dharavi has. But the services are not conducted in Tamil on festive occasions in our Parish.
With all these comparisons in our mind, we only make our request very clear. The suggestion stands very clear and fine with all the background in this letter as mentioned above.




THE SOLUTION REQUIRED

1. That who ever is free or the senior most among the diocesan Tamil Speaking Priests be appointed as our Parish Priest without any delay and
2. Along with Ensure that all our needs as mentioned above are implemented

IV. Conclusively speaking,
It is the Christ our Lord Jesus who reached the people as He preached. We only request Your Eminence and the church authorities to reach to us as it has been preached to us about the brotherhood and equality by considering our long pending request for the Tamil Parish Priest from our Archdiocese of Bombay, the need to conduct the services in Tamil.

Sincerely,
B .Gerald

Mumbai Tamil Catholic Sabha
(Dharavi)Unit
PMJ Printers, Shop No. A/1,
421 Prabhakar Kunda Nagar
90 Feet Road
Dharavi
Mumbai – 400 017







1. 1300 families1 – document personally submitted to Your Eminence, Cardinal Oswald Gracias Office.