Car Accident Takes Lives of Two Indian Bishops and Their Driver

Bishop Vinod Peter, a leading Indian clergyman and president of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI), died in a road accident in the Indian state of Rajasthan on December 6, along with a local church leader, Bishop Jerald Andrews.

Sixty-one-year-old Bishop Peter, who as moderator of the Church of North India (CNI) was on an official visit to the state, was killed when the driver of the van in which he was travelling with the CNI’s Bishop Andrews, of Rajasthan, lost control of the vehicle and hit a tree near the roadside. Both bishops died instantly, while the driver died the following morning, officers at Bishop Peter’s diocesan office in Nagpur, central India, told ENI.

Bishop of Nagpur since 1984, Bishop Peter was elected moderator of the synod of the CNI, one of India’s leading churches, in October 1998. In March this year he was elected by a unanimous vote as president of the NCCI, an influential forum of 29 Orthodox and Protestant churches.

Bishop Peter’s wife Rachael is bedridden following a severe accident a few weeks ago. He also leaves behind a son.

Sixty-year-old Jerald Andrews of Rajasthan, who also died in the accident, was consecrated bishop in 1993 and leaves behind his wife and two daughters.

The death of Bishop Peter, the country’s senior ecumenical official, is an especially severe blow to Indian churches as it follows by only six months the death, also in a car accident, in Poland, of Archbishop Alan Basil de Lastic of Delhi, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI).

“This is a great shock to the entire Christian community in India,” NCCI’s senior vice president Mar Geevarghese Coorilos, of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, said of Bishop Peter’s death. Speaking to ENI from the city of Pune in western India, Mar Coorilos, assistant Metropolitan of Bombay, said that Bishop Peter had been “actively involved in ecumenical and inter-religious fields” as well as “down to earth in serving the people.”

In a statement released today, Bishop Peter’s diocese said he “was a unique leader and exceptional man who served the people with humility. … He was a visionary of great ideals, but retained a lifestyle of simplicity.”

V. S. Lal, general secretary of the CNI synod, said the “untimely and tragic death” of Bishop Peter was “a great loss to the churches in India, particularly to the Church of North India.” Lal said Bishop Peter “made a tremendous contribution to the life and work of the churches in India, and has been a member of several ecumenical bodies both in India and abroad, particularly the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion.”

Archbishop Oswald Gracias, secretary general of the CBCI, told ENI this evening as he prepared to go to Nagpur to attend Bishop Peter’s funeral tomorrow morning: “We have lost a very good friend with whom we had total understanding.”

He added that under Bishop Peter’s brief stewardship as NCCI president, the CBCI and the NCCI had reached their “highest point of collaboration.” He was referring to a joint meeting in July to formulate a Christian response to a series of attacks on Christians and churches in India.

In its official message of condolence, the CBCI stated: “God in his infinite wisdom has taken away yet another important leader from the church. This untimely death is no doubt a great loss, but we rely on Divine Providence to fill the gap created by their passing away.”