Appointed on July 31, Fr. Ephrem Nariculam will be the third bishop in the 46-year history of the central Indian diocese. Nariculam succeeds Bishop Vijay Anand Nedumpuram, who retired on reaching the age of 75.

The Catholic population of Chanda was just under 15,000 in 2009, less than half of one per cent of the total population of 3.8 million.

At St. Augustine’s, Nariculam taught Catholic spirituality and pastoral theology. He holds a doctorate in theology from St. Peter’s Pontifical Institute in Bangalore, India. He also studied at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome and a Jesuit theological college in India.

Born in 1960 and ordained in 1986, Nariculam’s doctoral thesis concerned the spirituality of parish priests in India’s religiously pluralistic context. He speaks Hindi, English, Marathi and Malayalam and was chaplain to the Syro-Malabar community in Toronto.