Mgr Machado, new bishop of Belgaum
Belgaum (AsiaNews) Mgr Peter Machado is the new bishop of Belgaum. He was ordained last Thursday by the Apostolic Nuncio, Mgr Pedro Lopez Quintana. The ceremony was concelebrated by archbishops Felipe Neri Ferrao and Barnard Moras as well as 14 bishops before a crowd of 15,000 faithful.
"A bishop must be first of all a shepherd, someone in the service of the poor, and especially a man of holiness and prayer," said Nuncio Quintana.
"The splendour and beauty of the liturgy stirred an emotional response in the faithful," Bishop Machado told AsiaNews. "The sweet smell of Christ was present in the function and people participated with solemnity."
"The ordination was conducted in English, Konkani and Kanada, and many told me that they enjoyed the celebration in all its beauty," he added.
"The wedding of Cana is the starting point of my episcopate," the bishop said about his ministry. "Mary says: 'Do whatever He tells you'. This is the spirit of the social doctrine of the Church. Charity is fundamental to the Universal Church and to my diocese in Belgaum."
"The diocese has a diversified economy. Whilst towns are developed, much of the rest of the territory is affected by rampant poverty," he explained. "My mission here is to serve and re-evangelise".
Diocesan administrator Father Derryck said that "Bishop Machado faces many challenges in this diocese. This is a basically agrarian society, and whilst there are some affluent families in the three towns, in the other three districts, people are very poor and do not get even two square meals a day."
Bishop Machado said that Dalit constitute some 20 per cent of the diocese of Belgaum and that there are many Evangelical Pentecostal groups.
"We must respond to the need for personal contact among the faithful," he said. "In his homily, Nuncio Quintana said that the bishop must be a shepherd. This has obvious symbolic overtones in our farming diocese. I must take care of the educational, family and emotional needs of the people who have been assigned to me."
"As for re-evangelising, I saw that in my previous diocese of Karwar, many Pentecostals came back to the Catholic Church because for them the Pentecostal Churches are too demanding in terms of money".
"I especially want to focus on the family and marriage, which is under attacked from every direction. Christian values are barely surviving in our society. Globalisation and economic growth have a negative moral and cultural impact and are being felt everywhere, even in our diocese," he said.
"For this reason, I chose as my starting point Mary's words to Jesus at the Marriage at Cana, Bishop Machado said, noting that the diocese itself is devoted to Our Lady of Fatima.
Some 15,000 people attended the ceremony on the Shamiana esplanade near St Paul's Church. More than 2,000 came from the new bishop's old diocese of Karwar. Another 520 members came from the neo-catechumenal way to which he belonged for more than 12 years.
"I was stirred by the liturgy," Thomas Kutty told AsiaNews, a participant who came from Bangalore for the celebration. "Thanks to the bishop's and the other celebrants' resplendent vestments and the smell of incense I felt like I was having an encounter with Christ."
.png)
07/02/2019 17:28
13/02/2006
