Bishop Kalathiparambil is new Verapoly archbishop, Vatican

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Nov 01, 2016: Official sources have announced that  Pope Francis on October 31 appointed Bishop Joseph Kalathiparambil as the new archbishop of Verapoly in Kerala, southern India. 

The Pope has accepted the resignation of Verapoliy’s Archbishop Francis Kallarackal.

Bishop Kalathiparambil, 64, is current secretary of the Rome-based Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant People.  Archbishop Kallarakal will remain the Verapoly archdiocese’s administrator until his successor takes charge.  This was announced at noon time in Rome and corresponding time in India, says a press release from Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India.

Bishop Kalathiparambil headed Calicut diocese in northern Kerala until his appointment in Rome in February 2011.  He was born on October 6, 1952, at Vaduthala, a suburb of Kochi, Kerala’s commercial capital. He was ordained a priest on March 13, 1978 and the bishop of Calicut in 2002.

Pope Benedict XVI called Bishop Kalathiparambil to the Vatican in 2011. But with the reform of Pope Francis of the central administration of the Catholic Church in the Vatican, the four Pontifical Councils for Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, Justice and Peace, Cor Unum, and Healthcare ‎Workers‎ will cease to exist individually on Jan. 1, 2017. They will be merged into a new single office for the promotion of integral human development.

The Verapoly Latin archdiocese lies in the civil districts of Ernakulam and Thrissur of Kerala covering an area of 1,500 square kilometers. Since 1904 it has its headquarters at Ernakulam. Its suffragan dioceses are Calicut, Cochin, Kannur, Kottapuram and Vijayapuram. Many parts of coastal Karnataka of today came under Verapoly in the mid 1800s.