A record number of bishops has assembled in Bangalore to seek ways to define the “Church’s role for a better India.”

This year’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) meeting, scheduled for February 1-8, will address “challenges of a materialistic world, nation building and probity in public life, besides what the Church has been doing for educational, health care and social development,” said Father Thomas Sequeira, deputy secretary general of the conference.

The conference is the umbrella organization of all bishops from India’s three Ritual Churches, Latin, the Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara rites.

Father Sequeira said more than 160 bishops from the country’s 164 dioceses would attend the biennial meeting at St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences in Bangalore.

This year marks the golden jubilee of CBCI’s social service arm, Caritas India, as well as the shifting of its headquarters from Bangalore to New Delhi.

The CBCI Centre began working from the national capital in 1962.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Josef Sayer, director of Misereor, are among the participants this year.

Fr Sequeira said the meeting will also discuss ways to strengthen 13 regional bishops’ councils as well as setting up a national network for quick dissemination of information.

The meeting will also review the follow-up of two earlier CBCI meetings on “Youth for peace and harmony” and “Empowerment of women in Church and society.”

The bishops will also look for ways to raise funds locally for their projects as overseas funding has fallen off in the past few years.

CBCI is the fourth largest Episcopal conference in the world. It was established in 1944, three years before India became an independent nation, and coordinates study and discussion of issues affecting the Church and nation.

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