Inayat Bernard

Fr. Inayat bernard in 2014

Fr Inayat Bernard is the former parish priest of Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Kasur, 55 kilometres south of Lahore, in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lahore.^[1] Currenty he is the rector of St. Mary's Minor Seminary, Lahore.

Father Bernard, ordained a priest for Lahore diocese in 1980, graduated from the Punjab University. Until July 1987 he was editor of Catholic Naqib, Pakistan's largest Catholic newspaper before leaving to study at the Southeast Asia Interdisciplinary Development Institute in Manila, Philippines.^[2] After serving in Lahore's Mariamabad and cathedral parishes, he was appointed rector of the diocese's St. Mary's Minor Seminary, Lahore in 1988. Father Bernard is also secretary of the Pakistan Catholic Press Association.

In July 1993, Father Bernard was appointed rector of the Christ the King Seminary (Pakistan).^[3]

He is also Co-editor, along with Mgr Shaheen Mathew and Father Bonnie Mendes, of a new publication AMAL (Action) published by the Youth Association for Leadership and Development.^[4]

He is also a member of the National Commission for Inter-religious Dialogue and Ecumenism (NCIDE) who organised the lighting of a peace candle and planting of a tree symbolising peace between India and Pakistan.^[5]

He is the author of an Urdu-language book “Christianity in Punjab” in which he re-discovers the birth, formation and expansion of Christianity (1886 onwards) in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is a historical account and voices hope for the future of the local church from the perspective of laity.^[6]

On December 17, 2009 at a celebration of 40 years of Caritas Pakistan functioning in Lahore diocese the Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha appointed Fr Bernard as Diocesan Executive Secretary of Caritas.^[7]

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