Media Release

Bengaluru Jul 13: The holy father has appointed Fr Arokia Raj Satis Kumar (47), the chancellor of the archdiocese and Fr Joseph Soosainathan (60), parish priest of the Sacred Heart Church as the auxiliary bishops of Bangalore archdiocese.

Fr Arokia Raj Satis Kumar was born on September 5, 1977 in Bengaluru. He studied philosophy and theology at the St Joseph’s Seminary, in the diocese of Mangalore and was ordained priest on May 2, 2007 for the archdiocese of Bangalore.

He has held the following duties and conducted further studies: assistant parish priest of St Joseph, St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral and Christ the King in Malleswaram (2007-2010); master’s degree in canon law from the St Peter’s Pontifical Institute in Bengaluru (2010-2012); parish priest of Christ the King in Malleswaram (2012-2014); doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Urban University of Rome (2014-2017); since 2017, judge of the ecclesiastical tribunal; Since 2018, rector of the Bhavan Bhakti Minor Seminary and parish administrator of Lourdes in Tumkur; from 2019, chancellor diocesan; from 2020, professor of canon law at the St Peter’s Pontifical Institute in Bengaluru; from 2021, coordinator of the studies of the major seminarians.

Fr Joseph Soosainathan was born on May 14, 1964 in Bengaluru. He studied philosophy at the St Peter’s Pontifical Seminary and theology at St Paul’s Seminary in the diocese of Tiruchirappalli. He was ordained a priest on 15 May 1990 for the Archdiocese of Bangalore.

He has held the following duties: assistant parish priest of the St Joseph and St Francis Xavier Cathedral (1990-1991); parish priest of St Anne (1991-1997), St John Evangelist (1997-2004), Our Lady of Fatima (2004-2010 and 2017-2020), St Peter and Paul (2010-2017) and Sacred Heart (from 2020).

The archdiocese of Bangalore has a Latin Catholic population of 3,60,561, 134 parishes, and 157 diocesan priests. It covers 27,014 square kilometers, comprising the civil districts of Bengaluru urban, Bengaluru rural, Chickballapur, Kolar, Ramnagara, and Tumkur.

The Archdiocesan territory was formerly part of the Mysore Mission, which was separated from Pondicherry in 1845. The Mysore Mission was elevated to an apostolic vicariate in 1850 and elevated to a diocese with Bangalore as its headquarters in 1886. The diocese of Bengaluru was bifurcated from Mysore on February 13, 1940, and it became the archdiocese in 1953.

Its former Archbishop Alphonsus Mathias passed away on July 10, 2024, at the age of 96, and his funeral is scheduled to be held tomorrow, July 15.

Archbishop Peter Machado (70) is the metropolitan archbishop of Bangalore, and Archbishop Bernard Blasius Moras (82) is the emeritus archbishop of the archdiocese.