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His Holiness Pope John Paul II

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 "Prepare the Way of the Lord"
                   (Mk. 1:3)

 We have just celebrated the Platinum Jubilee of the Ranchi Diocese in November 2002.  It was in fact on 25.05.1927 that Pope Pius XI made the Ranchi Mission into a diocese, comprising territories in Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh.  This portion of the people of God numbered 2,33,000 baptized Catholics.  But it was only months later, on 15.02.1928, that Mgr. Louis Van Hoeck,. s.j., Bishop of Patna, received news about his appointment as first Bishop of Ranchi.  As a former Ranchi missionary he had worked in Kurdeg, in Jashpur and in Ranchi, till Pope Benedict XV made him the first Bishop of Patna on 10.09.1919.

Fruit of Lievens' Mission

The Ranchi diocese was the fruit of the Lievens' Mission.  Lievens arrived at Ranchi on 18.03.1885.  He left it on 26.08.1892, a broken man.  He died at Louvain in Belgium on 07.11.1893.  He had sacrificed himself so that others might live.  The movement of grace, linked with the work of the Servant of God the saintly Fr. Constant Lievens, s.j. the Apostle of Chotanagpur, gave rise to the emergence of the Third Church in India (the earlier ones having been linked, with St. Thomas and with St. Francis Xavier respectively).  Lievens' motto, "Fire must burn," has continued to inspire this Church over the decades.  The well knit and disciplined community grew in numbers and in fervour.  It produced innumerable catechists, teachers, lay leaders, vocations to the priesthood and religious life, including twenty-three Bishops, of whom four Archbishops, all of them indigenous sons and daughters of the soil.  All this would not have been possible without the consistently generous support of fellow members in the wider Church, to whom Ranchi will be ever grateful.