As far as historical records show, the first
Catholic priest to enter this
mountain
Kingdom was the Portuguese Jesuit, Fr. Joao Cabral who passed through the
Kathmandu Valley in the spring of 1628 and was received graciously by the king
of that time, probably King Lakshminarasimha Malla of Kathmandu. He was
just passing through, however, on his journey from Shigatse to Hugli in India.
On the eve of Christmas in 1661 two Jesuit
priests, Albert d’Orville a Belgian from Brussels and Johann Grueber
an Austrian from Linz visited Kathmandu from the Imperial Chinese
Observatory in Peking via Lhasa. Pratap Mala, the then King of Kathmandu
received them and was ready to grant them permission to preach the new religion
in the kingdom, but without waiting for the permission they left for Agra, the
headquarters of the Tibet-Hindustan Mission, in India.
The first attempt to a more permanent presence in
Nepal dates from a special session of the once Propaganda Fide in Rome on
14th March 1703 when it was decided to open a mission to Tibet
which would include a section of north India and the whole of what now is Nepal,
which was on the way from Patna to Lhasa. This new enterprise was assigned to
the Italian Capuchin Friars. The first Capuchins set out from
Europe
in May of 1704. Of the six who set out for Tibet two died on board ship, one was
put ashore at Cyprus, too ill to carry on; one remained at Chandanagore in
India. Only were able to set out from
India
for Tibet. They arrived in Kathmandu on 21st February of 1707 but
stayed only long enough to arrange their journey to Tibet, departing on 12th
June of the same year for
Lhasa.
It was only after a reorganization in 1714 that
the Capuchins were able to send three men to open a more permanent station in
Nepal. They arrived in Kathmandu in the middle of January 1715, setting first in
the kingdom of Kathmandu where they were favourably received by the king.
Over the next fifty-four years, despite many
difficulties arising from suspicious, misunderstandings, lack of manpower and
lack of material resources their work grew and the Capuchins extended their
service to the kingdoms of Bhaktapur and Patan. In addition to
this, they were in contact with the kings of both Gorkha and Tanahun.
On
18th
November 1737 King Ranajita Malla of Bhaktapur issued a Decree of Liberty
of Conscience in favour of the fathers. King Jayaprakash Malla of Kathmandu
had issued a similar decree in the previous month. On 24th March 1760
father Tranquillius blessed a small church, situated in Wotu Tole in
Kathmandu
under the title of the Assumption of Our Lady. There was also a small
chapel in Bhaktapur dedicated to Our Lady under the title of the Annunciation
and another one in Patan.
In 1744 King Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha
had begun his military campaign that ultimately ended in the conquest of the
three kingdoms of the valley in 1768 and 1769. The Capuchin Fathers had known
Prithvi Narayan Shah earlier and were on friendly terms with him
providing medical aid to his brother who was wounded in an attack on Kirtipur.
Toward the end of this period, however, when king Jayaprakash Malla of
Kathmandu sought the help of the East India Company in his fight against
Gorkha, suspicion fell on the Capuchins as having been involved in this scheme.
After the Gorkhali conquest of the valley this suspicion
hardened. This suspicion, plus the lack of manpower and resources, made the
position of the Capuchins, who numbered only three at the time, untenable. They
asked the new king for permission to leave
Nepal.
Permission was given for one of them to leave and father Giuseppe di Rovato
left the valley on 4th February 1769 with some fifty-seven Christians
who settled at Chuhari, where their descendants still live. Within a few weeks
the remaining two Capuchins, who had been retained as a sort of hostages
against any further interference from the plains, were given permission. to
leave.
The
Capuchins left
Nepal
with a promise to return, but it was 1786 before they were in a position to
fulfill their promise. In that year father Giuseppe di S. Marcello came
to Nepal where he stayed for three years, being joined for one year by father
Carlo Maria. Lack of manpower in India forced the superiors in the plains to
recall father Joseph in 1789. In 1794 father Giuseppe along with father
Romualdo di Senigallia returned to
Nepal.
Father Romualdo left because of ill health after a few months, but father
Giuseppe stayed on, dying in Kathmandu on 9th November 1810.
The year
1814 saw the outbreak of war between Nepal and the East India Company. The
treaty of Sugauli of 1816 brought an end to the war, but one stipulation of that
treaty stated that the king of Nepal must not “take or retain in his service any
British subject, nor the subject of any European and American State, without the
consent of the British government. This stipulation effectively closed the
borders of Nepal to all foreigners, and both sides observed the stipulation
until Indian Independence in 1947.
Tribal people from Bihar particularly present Jharkhand started
coming to
East Nepal
in search of employment in the tea gardens from the early decades of the last
century. A number of these people were Catholics. Priests from the north Bihar
region bordering Eastern Nepal kept visiting incognito, these Catholics
who had migrated to Nepal, at least from the early 1940's. However, no
systematic ministry was possible due to the prevailing condition in the country
at that time.
In the
fall of 1949 father Marshall Moran, S.J., then principal of St. Xavier's
school in Patna and a member of the Senate of Patna University, was asked by the
Univarsity to go to Nepal to supervise the annual examinations at the
Trichandra
College, then affiliated to Patna University. On 1st October he
crossed the border into Nepal from Raxaul. While in Nepal he was taken to meet
the Prime Minister, Mohan S.J.B. Rana, who raised the question of the
possibility of the opening of a school in Nepal similar to St. Xavier's in
Patna. Mrigendra S.S. Rana, the director of public education, arrived in
Patna to inform father Moran that the government of Nepal was inviting him to
open a school at
Godavari.
Within a few days, however, the Rana government was overthrown through the
initiative of King Tribhuvan; further planning had to await confirmation
by the new government. In March of 1951 formal approval came from the new
government through the minister of education, Mr. Nrip JungRana.
Father
Moran returned to Kathmandu in May to prepare for the opening of Godavari
School, which opened on 1st July 1950 with three Jesuits, fathers
Moran, Francis Murphy and Edwin Saxton, two Nepali teachers
and sixty five students, classes one through six. Facilities at Godavari soon
proved inadequate for the growing number of students and in September of 1954
father Moran acquired a piece of property in Jawalakhel for the primary
section of the school. St. Xavier's Jawalakhel opened officially on 8th
September 1954.
Work in
Nepal
began with the Jesuits from
Patna diocese and their work was thus
a part of the diocese of
Patna.
On this first pastoral visit to
Nepal
in November of 1954 Bishop Wildermoth of Patna brought with him two
Sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Patna (sisters
Benigna and Rita) to explore the possibility of the sisters offering
education to the girls of
Nepal.
The proposal met with approval and three sisters arrived on 27th
January 1955 to open St. Mary's school at Jawalakhel.
From these humble beginnings the work of the
Church in
Nepal has
spread to other areas and includes social service, research, health, education
for the poor and disadvantaged, pastoral and retreat work.
Following
the establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the
Kingdom of Nepal and the Catholic Church in 1983,
on 7 October 1983, the Holy See separated Nepal from the Patna diocese
and erected the Missio sui Iuris of Nepal. As the first superior of this
new ecclesiastical unit appointed the Rev. Anthony Francis Sharma, S.J..
The first native Jesuit. Msgr. Sharma was installed as the first Ecclesiastical
Superior of Nepal on
8th
December 1984
Archbishop
Agostino Cacchiavillian
presented his credentials to the king as the first Pro-Nuncio in 1985.
Archbishop George Zur was the next Nuncio and Archbishop Lorenzo
Baldisseri followed him in 1999. In July 2003, Archbishop Pedro Lopez
Quintana presented his credentials and became the fourth Nuncio to
Nepal.
With these events the Church in
Nepal
entered a new era, no longer an appendage to an Indian diocese but a Church in
its own right, it began expanding its presence outside
Kathmandu
valley both to the East and to the West. Several missions were opened outside
Kathmandu and many Congregations of men and women were invited to work in Nepal.
It was a period of great political changes too, in Nepal, absolute monarchy
along with its “Panchayathi” system of governance was abolished and
parliamentary democracy was introduced in the country. The new constitution
promulgated by the late king Birendra Bir Bikram Shah in 1991 gave
freedom to practice one's religion provided that there was no attempt on
conversion. Part III article 19 of the constitution states: “Every person
shall have the freedom to profess and practise his own religion as
coming down to him hereditarily having due regard to the traditional
practices - provided that no person shall be entitled to convert the
religion of any person”.
After
a long waiting in 1993 'The Nepal Catholic Society’ was registered with
the government giving a sort of legal representation. In the following year on
March 19th two priests of the “Missio Sui Iuris” were ordained
by Bishop Eric Benjamin of
Darjeeling,
in Damak, Eastern Nepal. From the beginning of 1995, the priests of the mission
started administering the only parish that existed in the kingdom. On
15th August 1995,
Cardinal Josef Tomko, the Prefect of the Congregation for Evangelization of
Peoples, dedicated the partially completed
church of
The Our
Lady of the Assumption in
Kathmandu. It was named after the very
first church in the valley, built by the Capuchins nearly 250 years ago.
On
8
November 1996,
the Missio sui Iuris of Nepal was raised to an
Apostolic
Prefecture,
with Mons. Anthony F. Sharma as the first Apostolic Prefect of Nepal.
Before the millennium ended four more missons (Damak,
Deoniya, Dharan and Pokhara) were raised to the status of parishes. Five of the
Prefecture priests were ordained at the Church of the Assumption on
31st
May 2000 in Kathmandu by Archbishop Benedict Osta of
Patna.
Over the years the Church has established its
presence in various parts of
Nepal
and the number of faithful has grown to nearly seven thousand. Through it's
various services, educational institutions, health programmes and social
service, especially through Caritas
Nepal
it has reached out to millions of Nepalese. The Church looks forward with hope,
trusting tin the words of her Master who said, “do not be afraid little
flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom”
On
10 February 2007,
the Apostolic Prefecture of Nepal was raised to an
Apostolic
Vicariate,
with H.E. Mons. Anthony F. Sharma as the first Apostolic
Vicar of Nepal.
