Cardinal Pareckattil

Founder

Photo: Wikimedia (CC BY-SA)

Cardinal Pareckattil is the founder of Lisie Hospital (1956)[1], an Indian non-profit working on healthcare and faith-based service from Kochi.

Joseph Parecattil (1 April 1912 - 20 February 1987) was an Indian prelate of the Syro-Malabar Church who served as Archbishop of Ernakulam from 1956 to 1984 and was created a cardinal in 1969, the first from Kerala and the second from India. Alongside his ecclesiastical work he founded a number of charitable and educational institutions, among them Lisie Hospital at Kaloor in Kochi, established in 1956 and named after Saint Therese of Lisieux.

Early life and education

Parecattil was born on 1 April 1912 at Kidangoor, near Angamaly. He studied at the minor seminary in Ernakulam and the major seminary at Kandy, where he took a doctorate in theology with a dissertation on the views of Augustine and Pelagius on divine grace. He also studied economics at the University of Madras.

Career

Ordained priest on 24 August 1939, he served as assistant pastor at Narakal and North Paravur and as pastor at Chunangamvely, and edited the weekly Sathyadeepam. Pope Pius XII appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Ernakulam and Titular Bishop of Arethusa of the Syriacs on 28 October 1953, and he was consecrated by Cardinal Eugene Tisserant on 30 November 1953. He became Archbishop of Ernakulam on 20 July 1956.

He attended the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, and Pope Paul VI created him a cardinal on 28 April 1969. He founded Lisie Hospital in 1956 and Bharata Mata College in 1965 under the Bharata Mata Educational Trust, and supported Kalabhavan, a cultural arts centre in Kochi. As chairman of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India from 1972 to 1976 he helped develop St John's Medical College Hospital in Bangalore.

He served as president of the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council and, from 1972 until his death, as president of the Pontifical Commission for the Revision of the Code of Oriental Canon Law. He took part as an elector in both papal conclaves of 1978. He retired as Archbishop of Ernakulam on 30 January 1984 and died on 20 February 1987, aged 74; he is buried at St Mary's Cathedral Basilica, Ernakulam.

Recognition

India Post issued a commemorative postal cover in 2012 to mark the centenary of his birth.[2][3][4]

Lisie Hospital

Founded in 1956 by Msgr. Joseph Kandathil under the Archdiocese of Verapoly, Lisie Hospital in Ernakulam has grown from a small charitable clinic into one of Kerala's leading mission hospitals. Its Lisie Heart Institute, set up in 2002, is among India's largest cardiovascular centres and performed Kerala's pioneering heart transplants, while the hospital continues its founding mission of affordable care for the poor.

Lisie Hospital reports the following, on its own site:

Lisie Heart Institute has cared for nearly 5 lakh patients and performed more than 14,000 open heart surgeries and over 60,000 cardiac interventional procedures