Cardinal Filoni releases Catholic directory - source book of latest information about the Catholic Church in India.

Cardinal Filoni releases Catholic directory:

The directory continues to be the official and most referred source book of latest information about the Catholic Church in India.

By Bijay Kumar Minj
New Delhi:  Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, released the Catholic Directory of India (CDI) on Friday.

Presenting the first copy of the directory to Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, he said directory will help evangelization as it "has all the information about the dioceses in India.

India is a unique country where all the Catholics of three rites live their faith and grow together peacefully in brotherhood, the top Vatican official noted.

Cardinal Filoni arrived in India as special envoy to pope to attended the silver jubilee celebrations of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India, the forum of Latin rite bishops.

The visiting Church dignitary from Vatican came to the headquarters of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India to get acquainted with its functioning through its various offices.

Cardinal Gracias, while addressing to some 80 people at the CBCI, said the directory is “an invaluable source book” of information about the Church in India and a very helpful guide for those who want to study any diocese or region.

CDI 2013, which has 2,548 pages, comprises of three parts with first part being the general information about the universal church with the latest demographics and other statistics.

The second part is about information about the 166 dioceses with maps, history, statistics and addresses and the third part is about conference of Religious India, societies of Apostolic life, secular institute and Pious Association, said Fr. Benny Kanjirakatt, editor of CDI.

Cardinal Telesphore P. Cardinal Toppo, Cardinal George Alencherry, Apostolic nuncio Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, Archbishop Albert D’Souza of Agra, Archbishop Anil Joseph Thomas Couto of Delhi, Archbishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara of Faridabad, Jacob Mar Barnabas, Apostolic Visitator, Syro-Malankara, Catholic Church, Auxiliary Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Delhi and officials of CBCI attended the program.