India's CCBI, Vailankanni shrine marking jubilees

February 04, 2013 - The Latin-rite bishops of India on Tuesday begin the celebration of 25 years of their episcopal conference, timing it with 50 years of the country’s famous shrine Our Lady of Health at Vailankanni in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state. With a project of “Pastoral Plan for the Church in India”, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI), which is the body of the Latin Rite Church in India, is marking its silver jubilee, February 5-10. CCBI was established on April 22, 1988, following the directive of the letter of Blessed Pope John Paul II to the Bishops of India on 28th May 1987. Meanwhile, the Marian shrine at Vailankanni was conferred the status of Minor Basilica in 1963. For this reason, Pope Benedict XVI has delegated Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as his personal envoy to the Vailankanni celebrations of CCBI’s silver jubilee as well as the shrine’s golden jubilee, which will culminate in a Mass on Sunday at the Marian Shrine. Apostolic Nuncio to India Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio will join cardinal Filoni at the Mass.
The CCBI wishes that the celebration would not only be a historical and a grand type of event but it is an opportune time for aggiornamento with a pastoral plan for the Church in India, which has diverse needs and challenges but also some commonalities. Thus, the 120 shepherds expected, would deliberate on the need of a pastoral plan with priorities and concrete Action plan for a decade or so. It would bring about a Catholic renaissance in the Church in India for the cause of ‘New Evangelization’. The plan is hoped for deepening the faith of the practicing Catholics, inviting the lapsed and proclaiming good news to the non-Christians. It is a great hope in the Year of Faith for the Latin Church in India. And the three sui juris Churches would share their faith, programs of faith and projects of service to make a better India promoting God’s reign in this rich religious land of India.