St. Joseph’s Monastery
Monastery Road, Karikamuri P.O.,
Kochi-682 011, Kerala, India

November 8, 2014                                                             

 
Prayerful greetings.  

I am very happy to inform you that our Founder Blessed Kuriakose Elias Chavara will be canonized in Rome on November 23, 2014 with five others including Blessed Sr. Euphresia CMC who is a member of the Congregation founded by Blessed Chavara. I take this opportunity to thank you for your prayers since I had always asked you to pray for this intention. When I became the Prior General in 2008 the first thing I said (to the members of the General Synaxis who elected me) was that I would do everything possible to speed up the canonization process of Blessed Chavara.

With the grace of God I did everything humanly possible for this intention during the six years of my term. And just two days before I left the office of the Prior General Pope Francis approved the miracle attributed to Blessed Chavara paving the way for the canonization. It was a great blessing from God for which I will always remain grateful.


I will be going to Rome for this big event and I wish you could be there too. I will be there from November 20 to 25, 2014. Kindly pray for the success of this great event. I will keep all of you in my prayers while I attend the canonization ceremony. After the canonization ceremony in Rome we will have a national thanksgiving celebration here in India on November 29, 2014. Kindly pray for its success also.

This year we will have 70 ordinations to priesthood during the Christmas season. We consider it as a special gift from Blessed Chavara during the time of his canonization. Kindly keep our deacons who are going to be ordained in your valuable prayers.


At present I am in charge of the web channel which I started while I was the Prior General. It is called Living Faith Channel. You can watch it on the Internet under livingfaithchannel.com. The channel is in our local language Malayalam. However, there are also English programs occasionally. We have a plan to upgrade it to IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) in the US and England which will enable people to watch it on regular television sets. Kindly continue to keep me in your prayers.


With best wishes, prayers and love,

Fr. Jose Panthaplamthottiyil CMI