THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The newly-formed Parassala diocese of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church will be inaugurated on the Nazareth Home School campus, Balaramapuram, at 2 pm on September 23.
The occasion will also witness the consecration of the first Metropolitan of the diocese, Bishop Thomas Mar Eusebius. Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, will preside over the ceremony. The Syrian Catholic Patriarch of Antioch Ignatius Yusef Younan will be the chief guest on the occasion. Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, the Apostolic Nuncio to India, will deliver the benedictory address. Justice Kurien Joseph of the Supreme Court will inaugurate the public meeting that will follow the inauguration. Mother Prema, the Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity, will deliver the keynote address. Cardinal Cleemis will preside over the public meeting.
The Parassala diocese has been carved out of the Thiruvananthapuram Major Archdiocese, and comprises the parishes in Kattakkada, Parassala and Neyyatinkara and two parishes in Thiruvananthapuram. The diocese has 103 parishes, one college, 12 aided schools, 59 other educational institutions and five charity organisations under it. Parassala, in fact, is the fourth diocese that has been carved out of the Thiruvananthapuram Archdiocese of the Syro-Malankara Church, after Marthandam, Mavelikkara and Pathanamthitta. With this, the church now has 11 dioceses and one exarchate.