Eucharist crucial to 'miracle of Chotanagpur,' says cardinal

- CNS photo/Anto Akkarat Cardinal Toppo meets with some of his people in India earlier this year.

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Quebec City

Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, archbishop of Ranchi, India, urged the Church to return to the radical sharing exemplified by the early Christians.

Toppo said that for St. Paul the life of love sharing was absolutely essential to the Eucharistic community. When that sharing was absent, the Lord's supper was not truly celebrated.

"For the early Christians, the Eucharist lost much of its meaning if it did not inspire compassion, mercy and love," he said.

Toppo spoke to about 15,000 pilgrims at the June 20 plenary catechesis at the Eucharistic Congress.

He pointed out the Acts of the Apostles recorded: "There was not a single needy person among them." The early Christians accomplished this in spite of the struggles of daily life, compounded by persecution and conflict.

"This is why the early Christians were so acceptable to many people, especially the poor and the marginalized," he said.

A miraculous story

The cardinal shared the miraculous story of his own people, the tribal people of central and northeast India.

Poor, illiterate, exploited and oppressed by powerful landlords before they first heard of Jesus Christ 163 years ago, Toppo said those remaining in the ancestral lands "were on the verge of extinction and had lost their will to live."

In 1845, the first Christian missionaries arrived, but Toppo said they had little success. Though some Tribals eventually became baptized, it was only after the arrival of Jesuit missionaries 30 years later that the Christian faith grew.

He singled out Jesuit Father Constant Lievens, who is now known as the apostle of Chotanagpur.

When Lievens arrived, there were 56 Christians in the area. When he died seven years later of exhaustion and tuberculosis, the region counted 80,000 baptized Catholics and more than 20,000 catechumens, the cardinal said.

He credited their success to the way the Catholic missionaries "understood, celebrated and lived the Eucharist."

The Loreto Nuns followed the Jesuits to the Tribal region and soon attracted indigenous women, he said. They formed their own order in Ranchi called The Daughters of St. Anne. This indigenous religious order has grown to 1,000 sisters present in 23 dioceses.

The extraordinary growth of Christianity in the tribal region is known as "the miracle of Chotanagpur." Christians in the Tribal area comprise 10 per cent of the 18 million Catholics in India.

Mother Teresa's miracle

Mother Teresa of Kolkata "is part of this miracle, too," he said.

When two Albanian Jesuits returned home to give a talk at a school, the future Mother Teresa, then teenaged schoolgirl named Agnes, heard their stories of the Kolkata mission that included the Ranchi area. She later joined the Loreto Nuns in order to come to India, he said.

Toppo said he later got to meet Mother Teresa and have her accompany him in his car. He knew she had been working late the previous night. He asked her where she got her strength. "Her reply came with a bullet-like speed: Jesus in the Eucharist," he said.

The cardinal is known in India for helping the poor through detox programs, education, and assistance for lepers. He has also fought against the illegal caste system that still plays a role in Indian life. He also supports a network to support needy children.

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