Shillong, 18 July 2026: The auditorium of Sacred Heart Theological College (SHTC) was filled to capacity on Saturday afternoon as the Caring community gathered to honour Fr. Jose Chunkapura SDB, who is taking leave of the institution after close to three decades at the helm of the Caring Ministry, the outreach programme he founded in 1989 to serve children afflicted by rickets and other disabilities across Meghalaya.
The farewell began at 2 pm and brought together priests, religious sisters, lay collaborators, benefactors, students and well-wishers whose lives have, in one way or another, been touched by the ministry Fr. Chunkapura built from a handful of cases into a programme that has treated more than 26,000 children over the years and continues to care for nearly 7,600 today.
Presiding over the proceedings were Fr. Sunil Barla, SDB, Rector of Sacred Heart Theological College, and Fr. Aloysius Hemrom, SDB, Administrator of the college. The occasion also marked a formal handover, with (Dr.) Fr. Joseph Anikuzhikattil, SDB introduced to the gathering as the new Director of Caring Ministry, taking up the responsibility of carrying forward the medical camps, the literacy programme and the housing initiative that have come to define the ministry’s work in and around Mawlai.
Among the dignitaries who addressed the gathering were Mr. Process T. Sawkmie, former MLA of the Mawlai constituency, Dr. Martina Marwein, and Mrs. Sumarlin Malingiang, who spoke of the quiet but far-reaching impact Fr. Chunkapura’s work has had on families in the surrounding villages. Speakers recalled how the ministry grew well beyond its original mandate of treating rickets, coming in time to include cleft-lip surgeries, wheelchairs and hearing aids for children with disabilities, financial support for widows and grandmothers raising children alone, and a literacy programme that today serves 500 children through five teachers working in two shifts each afternoon. Several speakers also pointed to the more recent Don Bosco Village initiative, under which land and homes have been provided to poor families in Phudmuri, Mawthawar, Laitlum and Nongkholew, as evidence of a ministry that has kept expanding its sense of who it is called to serve.
The programme was marked throughout by cultural presentations from the many schools and institutions associated with the Caring Ministry. Aspirants who volunteer with the ministry from Sacred Heart Girls Higher Secondary School opened the dances, followed by performances from students of St. Aloysius Secondary School, Mawlai Kynton Massar; Mawlai Presbyterian Higher Secondary School; St. Luke RCLAP School, Mawlai Mawkynroh; and Don Bosco Secondary School, Nongkhohlew. Students of Umsaw Mawjynrong RCLP School offered a set of songs, and a special item was performed by Claudia Nengnong, drawing warm applause from the hall. The formal programme closed with the presentation of gifts to Fr. Chunkapura by those present, a gesture that stretched across the different groups and institutions who had come to see him off.
In His remarks, Fr. Joseph Anikuzhikattil, spoke of Fr. Chunkapura’s founding vision for the Caring Ministry and of the discipline with which he had sustained it, noting that the programme’s growth over 29 years owed as much to his consistency as to any single initiative. All welcomed Fr. Anikuzhikattil into his new role and expressed confidence that the ministry, now resting on well-established structures of medical camps, literacy support and housing assistance, would continue to serve the children and families of the region in the years ahead.
For many in the auditorium, the afternoon was less a farewell than an acknowledgment of what had already been built. Fr. Chunkapura’s ministry has, over the decades, quietly shaped not only the lives of the thousands of children it treated but also the formation of the seminarians who assisted in the camps, several of whom credited their years at SHTC’s Caring Ministry with deepening their own sense of pastoral compassion. As the college turns to a new chapter under Fr. Anikuzhikattil’s direction, the send-off on 18 July stood as a recognition that the work begun in 1989 has, in the words of those who spoke, become part of the institutional memory of Sacred Heart Theological College itself.
By Joseph ANI
