Diocese of Darjeeling (History)

Diocese of Darjeeling

The Diocese of Darjeeling was errected on August 8th, 1962, and was formed by separating Darjeeling District from the Church of Calcutta, and joining it to the Prefecture Apostolic of Sikkim. In November 1997 the church in the sub-division of Siliguri was separated from Darjeeling Diocese to form the new Diocese of Bagdogra. The present Darjeeling Diocese consists of the three hill sub-divisions of Darjeeling, the State of Sikkim and the Kingdom of Bhutan.

Darjeeling

The Church first came to Darjeeling with the Irish Loreto Sisters in 1846, soon after the opening of the hill station of Darjeeling. The area was then under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Bishop Hartman of Patna Diocese and was staffed by Capuchin Fathers, who were mostly Italians. In 1886 when the hierarchy was established in India the area comprising the present sub-divisions of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Siliguri and the state of Sikkim was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Calcutta and came under the care of the Jesuits from Belgium.

In 1889, a theologate for the Society of Jesus called St. Mary’s College was started at Kurseong. Up to the end on 1971, when it was transferred to Delhi, the college contributed much to the expansion work in the district. Memorable among the missionaries of that time are Father M. Wery who worked in Kurseong from 1932 to 1957, and is known today as the ‘Apostle of the Nepalese’, and Father Bossaerts who started the first station in the terai at Gayaganga in 1933 where he died in 1945, after years of service to the tribal labourers brought from Chota Nagpur to work on the tea gardens in the plains.

In 1946, the English-speaking Jesuits of the Upper Canada Province came to the assistance of the Belgian Jesuits. They gradually took over the administration of the area, and in 1956 the Darjeeling Region of the  Calcutta Province was created, and this became a province of the Society of Jesus in 1977.

KALIMPONG & SIKKIM

In the Kalimpong area, work started in 1883, when the Fathers of the Foreign Mission of Paris settled down in Pedong with the hope of getting into Tibet via the Chumbi Valley. The Kalimpong sub-division, which was then known as “British Bhutan”, was attached to the Vicariate Apostolic of Lhasa and named ‘Wouthern Tibet Mission’. Prominent among the French Missionaries and a pioneer and scholar in Tibetan, was Father A. Desgodins, who founded Pedong.

In 1929, the territory was separated from Tibet to form an Independent Mission within the ecclesiastical province of Calcutta. In 1931, Sikkim was added to it and thus the ‘Perfecture Apostolic of Kalimpong-Sikkim’ came into existence, with Mgr. Jules Douhanel as its first Perfect Apostolic.

In 1935, The French Fathers handed the files over to the Canons Regular of the Swiss Congregation of St Maurice of Agaune (“CR’s”) and in 1937, Mgr Aurelio Gianora was appointed its new Perfect Apostolic. Twenty five years later, in 1962, he handed the territory over to Bishop Eric Benjamin, the first Bishop of the newly erected diocese.

BHUTAN

The Kingdom of Bhutan was separated from the Diocese of Tezpur and included in the Diocese of Darjeeling in 1975 by a Decree of the S.C for the Evangelization of Peoples (‘Qua Facilius’ No.217/75,20.1.1975).