Pilar Society Gets Pontifical Rights

(December 02, 2010) Pope Benedict XVI has granted the self-governing “pontifical status” to an indigenous society of priests in Goa, 123 years after it was established in the former Portuguese colony. The formal announcement elevating the Society of the Missionaries of Saint Francis Xavier is expected on December 4, Church sources said. Religious societies and congregations that began in a diocesan area function under the local bishops. According to Church laws, when elevated to pontifical right, they are “immediately and exclusively” put under the pope with “regards to internal governance and discipline.” Father Feroz Fernandes, who edits the society’s publication Worker’s Friend, said all formalities on the elevation are complete. “Only the announcement is pending,” he added. The society is popularly known as Pilar Society taking the name from Pilar hill in Goa, where it is based. Father Bento Martins of Goa founded it in 1887, with the permission of Dom Valente, the first Patriarch-Archbishop of Goa. “The society has to now gear up to its new role,” said Pilar Father Theodore Mascarenhas, in-charge of the Departments of Asia, Africa and Oceania at the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture. The new status gives it a mandate for widened evangelization, he added. The Society had first applied for pontifical right in 1942. On February 2, 2009, the petition for pontifical right was renewed, as the society had expanded into four provinces of Delhi, Goa, Kolkata, and Mumbai and the Agnel Region, as well as opened communities in Nepal, Rome, the USA, UK and Germany. The society currently has 458 professed members with 319 priests and 11 brothers.