Ranchi (AsiaNews) – Card Telesphore Placidus Toppo, archbishop emeritus of Ranchi, passed away yesterday at the age of 84, at the Constant Lievens hospital in Ranchi, capital of the state of Jharkhand, northeastern India.
He was an ethnic Oraon, member of an aboriginal people also called Kurukh in the Choṭa Nāgpur region in the state of Bihār (just north of Jharkhand). He was also the first Asian prelate of indigenous origin to be appointed cardinal.
At the age of 38, Pope Paul VI appointed him bishop of Dumka on 8 June 1978, while Pope John Paul II elevated him to the rank of cardinal on 28 September 2003 during the consistory of the following 21 October.
At the age of 65, the new cardinal became the tenth Indian in the history of the Church to receive the cardinal's scarlet biretta, the first to head the Archdiocese of Ranchi.
Card Toppo always appreciated foreign missionaries who worked with indigenous communities in Ranchi. The first Catholic priest arrived in the area in 1869, followed a few years later by a Belgian Jesuit, Father Constant Lievens.
"At least a million tribal people in India are now Catholics, conscious of their human dignity and socially accepted," the cardinal liked to say.
The archbishop emeritus of Ranchi was a person of true simplicity and had recently said that “a paradigm shift has taken place in the thinking of our people, so that their strong faith in Jesus Christ continues to liberate, transform, and empower them."
Cardinal Toppo also worked on other aspects of Church life, ensuring their development among indigenous peoples, like a congregation of local religious sisters and a seminary.
The latter, he recently said, “has produced in less than 100 years thousands of priests, even more thousands of religious sisters, and innumerable religious brothers and seminarians scattered in many parts of the world."
Today India’s Catholic aboriginal community can “legitimately boast" of its own nurses, teachers, professors, medical doctors, engineers, sportspersons and civil servants.
"With such a beautiful case, who will ever again be able to question the wisdom of serving the poor, as part of the effective evangelisation of Asia?" he asked.
As archbishop, Card Toppo found himself leading the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India in 2008 during the large-scale anti-Christian violence that broke out in Kandhamal, a district in the state of Odisha (Orissa).
Telesphore Placidus Toppo also shared a deep friendship with Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata), which began in 1978 when he was appointed bishop of Dumka. At that time, he wrote a personal note to Mother Teresa inviting her Missionaries of Charity to open a house in his diocese. Mother Teresa responded promptly sending some members of her institute.
