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Small Christian Communities in Bombay, India |
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Bishop
Bosco Penha is the auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Bombay in
India. He is also the Director of Small Christian Communities in the
Archdiocese. Regarding the well-organized communities in the area
numbering nearly 1800, he writes the following.
- The
SCC project entered the archdiocese through what is known as the Bombay
Priests’ Synod of 1980 which made a declaration that every parish and
every priest would give a priority to the building of Small Christian
Communities.
- The work actually began in a systematic
manner in June 1984; thus the year 2009 will make 25 years that this
effort is on. As a result almost every parish in the archdiocese is now
structured into SCCs. We have approximately 1800 communities and 12,000
animators (between 5-10 animators per community, on an average).
- An
Auxiliary Bishop (myself) is in charge of the entire project and is
helped by a team of around 25 persons, consisting of priests, the
religious and laity, known as the F.I.L.M.C. (Formation and Involvement
of the Laity in the Mission of the Church) Team, which services the SCC
programs in parishes. It is largely due to this team that the project
has been successfully implemented in every nook and corner of the
archdiocese.
- The SCCs implement programs of various types:
religious, socio-cultural, outreach, civic and political. Of these, the
SCCs are generally stronger in the first three and weaker in the latter
two categories. Nevertheless many beautiful acts of love and mutual
helpfulness take place all around the archdiocese because of these SCCs.
- At the present historical juncture of the growth of the SCC project in the archdiocese, we have initiated two new moves:
- To
break-up the communities into smaller clusters of families for more
effective involvement. Thus far, the average community size is about 50
families and from this large number, some are likely to slip through
without taking part in the SCC activities. Hence we have suggested
breaking up of these Small Christian Communities (SCCs) into smaller
clusters of about ten families each.
- Every community is
now requested to organize a youth group so that we are able to get more
youth involved in the SCCs and through the SCCs, in the parish at
large.
Bosco Penha
Director of SCCs
Archdiocese of Bombay
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