Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church, Mt. Poinsur

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Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Mount Poinsur, has been a Catholic Parish from 1547 to 1739 and again from 1912 onwards. It is presently operated by the C.M.S.F. brothers founded by Fray Paulus Moritz.

Mount Poinsur is an area of the city of Mumbai, in what is now called the "Western suburbs", and is now usually identified as part of the suburb of "Borivali (W)".

Mount Poinsur was originally a craggy hillock on Dharavi Island, an island that no longer exists independently, as, due to reclamations, it has been united with the island of Salsette.

According to tradition, the intrepid Franciscan missionary, Padre Antonio do Porto was the founder of this church in 1544, ten years after the Bombay-Baçaim coastal tracts were ceded by the Sultan of Cambay, Bahadur Shah, to Portugal by the Treaty of Baçaim (see Fr. Ernest Hull, S.J., Bombay Mission History: With A Special Study of the Padroado Question, Examiner Press, Bombay, 1929. Vol. I, pg. 10).

Fr. Meersman however holds that although Porto was its founder, the foundation could only have taken place shortly after his arrival in these parts in 1547 (Fr. Achilles Meersman, O.F.M., The Franciscans in Bombay, St. Anthony's Friary, Bangalore, 1957).

By October 1548, he and his companion, Joao de Goa, had made a number of converts and had founded a 'devout hermitage' at Mount Poinsur. In October 1549, we have the following description of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Piedade (Our Lady of Piety):

"On an island opposite Baçaim, a league and a half from the river... there is a church of Our Lady where there must be four hundred Christians.... It is entirely in a rock cliff.... It is very large and has four chapels." (Fr. Meersman, O.F.M., The Ancient Franciscan Provinces in India 1500 - 1835, Christian Literature Society Press, Bangalore, 1971. pg 193).

During the time of the same Padre Porto, the village of Mount Poinsur was granted to the Franciscans by the Governor of Baçaim Jorge de Cabral in the name of King John III of Portugal, for the maintenance of their work. Soon the Franciscans bought the two neighboring villages of Pare and Erangal around 1556-1559. Adjoining the church, they also built a Royal College in 1549, the ruins of which are still standing close to the present church.

Over the years, the four hundred villagers converted by Padre Antonio do Porto grew in number and soon a settlement for them was built around or opposite the church (records Padre Paulo da Trinidade).

Around 1630, the parish counted some 1500 parishioners in the villages of Mount Poinsur, Dhainsa, Simpor, Canaria and Cassor, with a chapel dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel in Canaria. It was also around this time that the name of the church at Mount Poinsur was changed to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.

During the Maratha invasion of 1739, Mount Poinsur was captured, the Friars dispersed, and the church, friary and college pillaged and left in ruins. Then for a century and a half, time and nature abetted by the local people who used the ruins as a quarry for stones did their destructive work, so that what had been spared by the Marathas fell into still deeper ruin.

Adjoining and beneath the church are the Mandapeshwar caves, the habitation of Hindu ascetics until the Franciscans took over and converted them into a crypt for the church which they built over them. After 1739, the Marathas reconverted the caves to Hindu usage. When these lands were ceded by the Marathas to England by the Treaty of Salbai in 1774, the caves under the dilapidated church were repossessed by the predominantly Catholic people of Mt. Poinsur to serve as a chapel, and functioned in this manner for a little more than a century. From 1739-1912, it appears that there was no resident Vicar of Poinsur. In 1888, through the efforts of the people of the City of Bandra and under the guidance of the Archdiocese of Goa's Vicar-General of the North, Padre Joao Braz Fernandes, the old parish church was rebuilt on the hillock above the caves and has since functioned as the parish church.

The church has had its own Vicar only from 1912 onwards, thus Humbert (J. Humbert, S.J., Catholic Bombay, Her Priests and Their Training, Catholic Press, Ranchi, Bihar, 1964. Vol. II, pg 219).

The church underwent major repairs and renovations in 1912.

As for the caves, they have been taken over by the Government of India in the 1960s and are designated as protected archaeological monuments under the Archaeological Survey of India (A.S.I.), although the Hindus are permitted to worship in them.

Mount Poinsur remained loyal to the Archdiocese of Goa during the Padroado-Propaganda conflict, as part of the Vicariate of the North (O Norte), and was later made part of the Diocese of Damaõ, 1886-1928, which revived the parish and assigned it to Brother Paulus Moritz and his newly founded Franciscan congregation.

In 1928, most of the Diocese of Damaõ, including the parish of Mount Poinsur, was integrated into the Archdiocese of Bombay, under its first Portuguese Archbishop Joachim da Lima, S.J.

The current Parish Priest of Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, as of 2006, is Fr. Franklin.

[edit] Sources

• 1982 Directory of the Archdiocese of Bombay, by Frs. Leslie J. Ratus & Errol Rosario, Seminary of Pope St. Pius X, Bombay. No copyright mentioned.

• School Diary, 2003 edition, St. Francis of Assisi School, Mount Poinsur. No copyright mentioned.