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Mumbai: One of the oldest Roman Catholic churches in Mumbai, Our Lady of the Rosary at Mazagon, has asked church-goers and members of the public to contribute old photographs, artefacts, and other memorabilia that will be used to recreate the church's history during its 230th-anniversary celebrations in October.
Since its establishment in 1794, the church has been rebuilt several times, with the present structure dating from 1965. However, there are no pictures of the old Portuguese-style church building that once stood on what is now called P D'Mello Road.
Father Nigel Barrett, the parish priest, said there have been three different renovations of the old church since its founding. "We have no photographs or images of the old church. The earlier buildings were built in a style influenced by Portuguese church architecture," said Barrett.
The church, located outside Dockyard Road railway station, soon to be named Mazagaon, has a history intertwined with the city's colonial past. Mazgaon was served by Our Lady of Glory Church, also called Gloria Church, the city's second oldest, established in 1572 as Nossa Senhora da Gloria. The rivalry between Portuguese and British colonialists led to a division of jurisdiction over the new churches established in the Mumbai region by missionaries. Those reporting to the Portuguese territory of Goa were referred to Padroado churches and the ones under the British to the Apostolic Vicariate of Bombay.
When Gloria Church came under the Goa jurisdiction in March 1794, the fisher folk community, who comprised most of the congregation, asked the British governor to allow them to remain under the Vicar-Apostolic. According to a report attributed to Fr Leslie Ratus (Directory of 1983), the fisherfolk built the new church of Our Lady of the Rosary with their own money because they were not allowed to hear Mass in Gloria Church. 'Whatever may have been the cause, their withdrawal from Gloria Church meant coming over to the Vicar-Apostolic's jurisdiction,' says a historical account.
The government permitted the fishermen to build a new church and cemetery at Mazgaon, a few meters away from Gloria Church. Thus, Mazagaon had two churches on account of the conflict. "It was more or less the local inhabitants who built the church. The earlier church was seen as a centre for the Portuguese aristocratic families. So the local people who got converted petitioned the governor for a plot of land," said Barrett.
The local people were the original inhabitants of Mumbai's islands who converted to Roman Catholicism, creating what is now called the East Indian community. The church's records mention that in 1595, at a baptism in Mazgaon conducted by Franciscan missionaries, more than 3000 inhabitants, probably Kolis, were baptised. The old Gloria Church, meanwhile, was pulled down in 1810 and rebuilt. The church was acquired in the late nineteenth century for building the Mumbai Port Trust railway and the Gloria Church shifted to its present site in Byculla in 1913, reborn with a Gothic structure.
Documents that support the date of the founding of the Rosary Church, now one of the 132 in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay, include government letters dated 1794, records of the first baptism recorded in June 1794, and the date on the first tombstone from 1798. One of the many changes in the church building took place in 1924-25, This church was completely remodeled in the 1960s to give it a modern look.
Sneha D'Souza, a member of the church who is a member of the team collecting the photographs and memorabilia, said that while they have a lot of anecdotal stories about the church, most passed on by word of mouth, photographs have been hard to come by. "That is because we are looking at the period before the 1960s when photography was uncommon. Weddings were occasions when people took photographs. Most photographs have not survived. The church was rebuilt nearly four times. We would have loved to recreate the lost architecture," said D'Souza.
Rosary Church
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