Page:A Manual of the Nellore District in the Presidency of Madras.pdf/729

706

NELLORE MANUAL.

The Roman Catholic Mission. - American Baptist Mission. - Free Church of Scotland Mission. — Hermansburg Lutheran Mission.

THE Right Rev. Bishop S. Fennelly has kindly furnished the following particulars with regard to the operations of the Roman Catholic Mission in Nellore:—

"I am unable to say at what time Christianity was first preached in the Nellore and Guntur Districts. These places were included in the old Jesuit Mission of the Carnatic. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773, the missions of the Carnatic were given into the charge of the French Congregation of Foreign Mission in virtue of Pontifical Brief, dated 18th September 1776. Though a bishop was established in Mylapore so early as 1606 under the patronage of the King of Portugal, the pastoral care of the bishop and priests of the royal patronage was confined exclusively to the few Portuguese merchants and Portuguese Government servants who resided in the immediate vicinity of Saint Thomé. From 1776 to 1843 the missions of Nellore and Guntur, together with the Telugu missions in Cuddapah, Kurnool, and Bellary, were under the spiritual care of the priests of the Congregation of Foreign Missions, whose head-quarters were at Pondicherry. In 1843, by an arrangement between the Vicars Apostolic of Pondicherry and Madras sanctioned by the Holy See, all the missions north of the river Palar belonging to the Congregation of Foreign Missions were given over to the Vicar Apostolic of Madras, in exchange for Cuddalore and several Tamil missions which were south of the Palar, and which were under the spiritual charge of the Vicar Apostolic of Madras. At the time of the transfer of the Nellore Mission to the Vicar Apostolic of Madras (1843) there were in the collectorate of Nellore 1,098 Christians dwelling in 21 different villages. In Nellore town there were 230 Christians, nearly all Pariahs. In Ongole there were 33, likewise Pariahs. The rest of the Christians were Sudras, Kammavaurs, some Reddies, and some weavers of the Thogata or Sali tribes. Several of the Christian villages are situated in the Zemindaries of Venkataghiri and Calastry.

“The little chapel in Nelore was built about the year 1805 chiefly through the exertions of a Mr. DeCruz and one or two other East Indian Catholics employed at the time in the Collector's office. Mr.