Syro-Malabar Catholic eparchy in Australia to ‘start from zero’
Kochi, India, 8 March 2014: The bishop appointed to head the newly erected Syro-Malabar
Catholic Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle of Melbourne, Australia, said he has “a
tough task ahead.”
“We have to practically start from zero,” said Bishop Bosco
Puthur, who was to be installed March 25, the feast of the Assumption, to lead the
40,000 Syro-Malabar Catholics in Australia. Until his appointment, he served as curial
bishop of the Syro-Malabar Church.
The eparchy in Australia is the Oriental
Catholic Church’s second outside of India. The first was established in Chicago in
2011. Bishop Puthur, 67, told Catholic News Service the Syro-Malabar Church in Australia
has no church building or other infrastructure to support its members.
“It
is a big task to bring together scattered families and set up parishes and centers
for the organized pastoral care of our faithful,” the bishop said in an interview
at Mount St. Thomas, the Church’s headquarters.
Pope Francis appointed Bishop
Puthur January 11 to head the new eparchy in Melbourne. The bishop also will be the
apostolic administrator of nearly 4,000 Syro-Malabar immigrants in New Zealand.
The
Melbourne eparchy is “unique in many ways,” Bishop Puthur said, explaining that 85
percent of Church members are younger than 40 and that most are immigrants from Kerala
working in health care and information technology.
Although Australia already
has four dioceses of Eastern Catholic Churches, Bishop Puthur said the Syro-Malabar
community is one of the largest in the country.
The establishment of the Australian
eparchy followed a 2011 meeting at the Vatican among Australian bishops and a delegation
from the Syro-Malabar synod led by Cardinal George Alencherry of Ernakulam-Angamaly,
major archbishop of Syro-Malabar Church.
The Syro-Malabar Church has more than
4 million members worldwide. It traces its origin to St. Thomas the Apostle, who is
said to have reached the shores of Kerala in A.D. 52.
Bishop Puthur said the
eparchy will depend on other Catholic churches to host liturgies and prayer services
in Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerala. “We cannot avail of the prime time in
these churches as they have fixed schedules,” he said. “Our people have to be patient
until we set our infrastructures and priests in place. It is a challenging task.”
Meanwhile,
Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’
Conference, recognized the establishment of the eparchy as an indication of the interest
the Vatican has in meeting the spiritual needs of the thousands of Syro-Malabar Catholics
who have settled in Australia. Source: catholicsentinel.org