Archbishop Mar Gregorios gets federal government recognition

Archbishop Benedict Mar Gregorios of Trivandrum spreads not only the Gospel, but also seeds of an agricultural revolution.

And the bearded patriarch combats unemployment and promotes social revolution through a seedlings project in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

India´s federal government this year asked the 76-year-old Syro Malankara metropolitan to produce 50,000 pepper seedlings.

“This is recognition of the agricultural experiments we conduct on the two-acre campus of the bishop´s house,” Archbishop Gregorios told UCA News Sept. 28.

He said every parish and Church institution in his archdiocese has “at least a vegetable garden” where vegetables and fruits are grown.

“Kerala is small, but thickly populated. So we have to produce the maximum from the land,” the archbishop said. Research and development go hand in hand with love and commitment to change.

He said his research benefits all “the people around us, for the greater glory of God.”

He uses parishes, government agencies and visitors to his home to spread the message of revolution — a loving agricultural revolution.

“Anything on earth can grow in Kerala,” said the white-bearded archbishop wearing a cross-studded black miter as he escorted visitors around his garden.

A profusion of imported fruits, vegetables and flowers are grown here.

Seeds from Hawaii were given by Indian Vice President K.R. Narayanan, when he served as ambassador to the United States. The archbishop named the giant plants that came from them “Narayan.”

He also grows a new variety of zubabul, a fast growing tree whose leaves are “good cattle feed” and which provides wood for fuel and furniture.

His garden has high-yielding tomatoes and beans from America, Indo-American hybrid papaya and carotene papaya, which he said can treat eye illnesses.

“Agriculture is the only way to solve unemployment in India,” Archbishop Gregorios holds. “Most of our farmers are ignorant of these high-yielding varieties,” he explains, anxious to spread the good news further.

He supplies seeds and seedlings to governmental agencies for a fee. Christians get them free.

The Kerala state government sent 25 poor youth to his nursery for training in 1991.

The farmer archbishop uses only organic manure. He says this is the only solution for the average farmer due to the cost of chemical fertilizers.

Archbishop Gregorios said that following a national seminar on using mushrooms many people here took up mushroom production.

“It has become a profitable business now,” he added.

Archbishop Gregorios expanded to animal husbandry, starting with rabbits, and now including ducks, poultry and pigs.

“Our dairy provides us milk, gas (biogas) and manure,” Mar Gregorios said.

His sheep farm produces hundreds of lambs annually. He supplies lambs free for farmers to rear, but recipients must pay back two lambs in two years so that the service can help others.

“I do this with one intention — to help people help themselves,” he said.

Mar Gregorios also heads a farmers´ association in Thiruvananthapuram, some 2,780 kilometers south of New Delhi.

The association has 50 volunteer groups “silently spreading” the archbishop´s agricultural revolution.

Source: UCA News