By George Jacoby –
Kerala Catholic Church marks the 150th death anniversary of the Italian Carmelite missionary, Bernardine Baccinelli of St. Teresa OCD, Vicar Apostolic of Verapoly and Titular Archbishop of Pharsalus, on September 5, 2018. Public events and a commemorative seminar planned for the Sesquicentennial Commemoration were called off in the light of the devastating floods and natural calamities that have shattered the lives of the people of Kerala.
A solemn Requiem Mass will be concelebrated on the evening of September 7 by Dr. Joseph Kalathiparambil, Archbishop of Verapoly, at the Mount Carmel St. Joseph’s Monastery church, Varapuzha, near Kochi city, where the Great Missionary was buried. Baccinelli’s landmark Pastoral decree of 1856, ordering for establishment of schools attached to every church in every parish and village in the Vicariate that comprised “the entire land of Malayalam,” is considered as the epochal charter for Kerala Renaissance.
The young Italian Carmelite, Bernardine Baccinelli of St. Teresa (Giuseppe Bernardo or Bernardino OCD), was 26 when he landed in Kerala from Rome on November 17, 1833, merely three years after his priestly ordination, along with his companion, Bernardine of St. Agnes from Naples. For the next 35 years he dedicated his life to the Malabar Mission, striving to transform and sanctify the lives of the people of the entire land of Kerala, under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Vicariate of Verapoly (Serra Verapolitana). He died at the age of 61 and was buried at Varapuzha, a pristine island on Kerala’s great river Periyar close to the present-day city of Kochi. He never went back home to Italy after his arrival here.
As soon as he could grasp the rudiments of the native tongue, Malayalam, he began ministering to his flock as the vicar of Varapuzha church, the first cathedral of the Carmelite prelates who reigned almost 300 years over the territories spanning from South Canara to Kanyakumari under the Malabar Mission.
During one of his visits to various parts of the parish, Bernardine met Thannikot Vareed Salvadore, who was engaged in teaching children at his kudippallikkoodam (traditional domestic tutoring) at Koonammavu. He was so moved by the dedication shown by this native Asan (master) in imparting knowledge to the youngsters that he instantly declared a salary of “16 puthan” for him. In order to make a permanent arrangement for the payment of salary, Bernardine got a commitment from four local worthies who would chip in one puthan each every month, while 4 puthan will be paid by the vicar of the parish and he would personally contribute 8 puthan. This human concern and farsightedness shown in instituting a mechanism for remuneration to be paid to a teacher for his selfless service was a distinct mark in all the undertakings, social interventions and Pastoral exhortations of Baccinelli.
Almost 20 years after that encounter with the village teacher at Koonammavu, and three years into his regime as the Apostolic Administrator of the Vicariate of Verapoly, Bernardine Baccinelli made an epoch-making proclamation in 1856 through one of his Pastoral decrees. He ordered that one or more schools should be established attached to every church in every parish and village of the Vicariate according to local requirements and they should be open to all sections of the society, irrespective of caste, creed, class or gender.
Although the Protestant missionaries under the banner of the London Mission and Church Mission Society in Travancore, and the Basel Evangelical Mission in Malabar had taken initiatives with their educational missions, it was Archbishop Baccinelli who had a comprehensive, all-embracing plan for a network of primary schools, consolidating a base for modern secular education with solid institutional infrastructure “all over the Malayalam land” over which he was the ecclesiastical administrator.
He appointed a few indigenous Tertiary Carmelites as his regional deputies who were to spend at least 20 days in each parish and observe the progress of the school project, assess the system of management of the school, selection and appointment of teachers, standard of instructions being given to pupils and reporting to the Apostolic Administrator on the state of affairs on regular basis. The overall supervision of the schools in the Vicariate was assigned to the Italian Carmelite, Fr. Leopold Boccaro, who was his procurator and delegate for the indigenous religious monasteries.
For raising funds for schools, monasteries, convents and churches, he had initiated a novel system for popular contribution, known as Pidiyari, “a handful of rice,” which was managed under the charter of Infant Jesus Charitable Society. A handful of rice was set apart daily in every Christian household from the rice that was to be cooked. This was collected every week and auctioned on Sundays in the parish church and the proceeds were sent to the Curia, all account details of which were published in the Pastoral letter.
In one of his Pastoral letters of 1857, Baccinelli refers to his previous order for establishment of schools and exhorts all concerned about the importance of faith formation and moral instruction for Catholic students in these schools. He stipulates that regular catechism classes should be conducted on Sundays and other obligatory days, special care should be given in choosing the catechism teachers, attendance register should be maintained for the students, the absentees and their parents should be admonished and punished if need be.
Dr. Sucy Kinattingal, a member of the Congregation of Teresian Carmelites, presently at San Giovanni Battista Carmel Convent, Cesano di Roma, Italy on deputation as Collaborator in Rome for the Process of Canonization of Servant of God Mother Eliswa, has come up with fresh documentary evidence and testimonies from secondary sources to establish that it was in 1856 that Bernardine Baccinelli issued the Pastoral decree on ‘Pallikkoppam Pallikkoodam’ as the Apostolic Administrator of the Vicariate of Verapoly.
In 1856, just a year after he professed his religious vows, Fr, Cyriac Elias better known as Fr. (Saint) Chavara Kuriakose was the Prior at Mannanam and was appointed as the Vicar General for the Syrian community in 1861 by the Vicar Apostolic, Archbishop Bernardine Baccinelli, in the context of the grave divisive schism brought on by the arrival of the Chaldean (East Syrian) bishop from Mosul, Mar Thoma Roccos, in Malabar. Fr. Chavara was transferred to St. Philomena’s Monastery at Koonammavu, two miles off Varapuzha, in 1864 and he spent the last seven years of his life there; he died at Konnammavu and was buried in a crypt near the altar of St. Philomena’s church, built by Bernardine Baccinelli. Today, it is the Verapoly Archdiocesan Pilgrimage Centre dedicated to Saint Chavara.
St. Chavara himself has testified in his Chronicles of the Mannanam Monastery that it was the Great Missionary Baccinelli who gave the order to establish schools attached to every church; although those portions of the manuscripts of the Chronicles with details of the instructions given by the Archbishop regarding the upkeep of the schools and the Pidiyari system etc have mysteriously disappeared from later editions of the volume of the Saint’s complete works.
Msgr. Baccinelli was responsible for the canonical erection, constitutional provisions and formal recognition from the General Chapter of the Discalced Carmelites in Rome for the Syrian Tertiary Carmelite Order, the Servants of Mary Immaculate of Mount Carmel in 1855, and as its Vicar Provincial he had deputed the Italian Carmelite Marcellino Berardi as his delegate to officiate at the solemn ceremony at Mannanam in which Fr. Cyriac Elias, along with 10 others, professed as religious priests of the new Order. (A century later, in 1958 its name was changed as the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, undoubtedly the most formidable premier brand of Syro-Malabar religious congregations today). Baccinelli had appointed Fr. Chavara its first Prior, the post he held until his death in 1871.
In February 1866, Baccinelli, Vicar Apostolic of Verapoly and titular Archbishop of Pharsalus, issued the decree constituting the first indigenous religious congregation for women in India, the Third Order of the Discalced Carmelites (TOCD), from which the Congregation of Teresian Carmelites (CTC) and the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel (CMC) originated in accordance with the order of division between the Latin and Syrian Rites. He had obtained the Constitution of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters of Genova and modified it considering local needs and got it translated into Malayalam for the new congregation led by Servant of God Mother Eliswa of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The TOCD sisters opened the first convent school and boarding house for girls at Koonammavu in July 1868, an epochal landmark in the history of social reforms and women’s empowerment in Kerala.
Baccinelli had built a two-storey building with six rooms in July 1857 for the first indigenous monastery for Latin Catholics attached to St. Philomena’s church, Koonammavu, which later was turned into a novitiate for the Syrian Tertiary Carmelites. He revived the plan for a religious congregation of Latin Catholic men and laid the foundation for the monastery of Immaculate Conception at Manjummel in 1866. This was the origin of the Manjummel St. Pius X Province of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, the biggest province of the global religious congregation today.
Seeing that the traditional hereditary domestic schools run by Malpans (scholarly priests) for formation of priests in Malabar were inadequate and defective on many counts – the candidates were trained mostly on Syriac liturgical texts with little attention paid to studies on theology or doctrinal matters – Vicar Apostolic Baccinelli ordered for the abolition of Malpanates and refused to ordain anyone other than those trained at the central seminary of Varapuzha or at the seminaries attached to the Syrian Tertiary Carmelite monasteries of Mannanam, Elthuruth or Vazhakulam.
Though it caused a lot of turbulence and precipitated the schismatic commotion fanned by the arrival of Mar Roccos, Baccinelli was determined to restructure the system of priestly formation in Kerala. He built a larger complex for a seminary at Puthenpally, near Varapuzha, to house both the Syrian and Latin rite candidates and shifted the central Seminary of Varapuzha, of which he was earlier a rector, to Puthenpally. This inter-rite seminary was again expanded and eventually shifted to Alwaye, where it developed into the Pontifical Seminary of Mangalapuzha and Carmelgiri, one of the largest formation centres for priests in the world.
For the spiritual nourishment of his flock, Archbishop Baccinelli introduced numerous innovative devotional practices, like the 40-hour Eucharistic adoration, monthly devotion to Virgin Mary, novenas, Way of the Cross, spiritual retreats in parishes, annual 10-day retreat for priests, homily in local language during Holy Mass, promotion of rosary and scapular and use of holy water etc. He insisted on pre-marital examination on basic Christian doctrines for the betrothed, and the format of the proclamation of marriage bans. He specified how baptism fonts and confessionals should be made, warned priests not hear the confession of women in the sacristy or let women enter their living quarters.
He instructed parish priests on ministering to the needs of the migrants, wandering people and beggars; the social need for encouraging everyone to undergo vaccination against smallpox, endorsing the drive initiated by the Travancore Rajah. He had promoted the indigenous Latin Tertiary Carmelite initiative to establish the Immaculate Conception Press at Koonammavu, from where ‘Satyanada Kahalam,’ the first Malayalam journal of repute to survive over a century, was first published as a Catholic bi-monthly. There was no aspect of religious, cultural or social life that he did not delve into in his numerous pastoral exhortations.
It was the era of Blessed Pope Pius IX, the longest-reigning elected Pope in the history of the Catholic Church. Pius IX, who defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, convened the First Vatican Council in 1869, which decreed papal infallibility. He promoted the inner life of the Church by many important liturgical regulations and various monastic reforms, and fought against false liberalism which threatened to destroy the very essence of faith and religion. Bernardine was greatly influenced by the devotional regimen and dogmatic approach of Pius IX. He was in ever so many ways a prophetic forerunner to the Vatican Council.
After an immensely dynamic and epoch-making Apostolic mission, the great Carmelite prelate died on September 5, 1868 at his headquarters on the island of Varapuzha. He was buried next evening at Mount Carmel St. Joseph’s Monastery church, the first cathedral of the Vicariate of Verapoly. Saint Chavara Kuriakose Elias paid a moving tribute to his Superior and Vicar Apostolic in his funeral oration.
2018 September 5 marks the 150th Anniversary of his death. The best way to pay homage to the Great Missionary would be to redeem the glorious legacy bequeathed to us by “the eminent Prince among the Carmelite prelates of Malabar,” Archbishop Bernardine Baccinelli of St. Teresa OCD, a herald of Kerala Renaissance.
The writer is the editor of Jeevanaadam, a weekly tabloid in Malayalam published under the auspices of the Media Commission of the Kerala Region Latin Catholic Bishops’ Council