The Hindu : `Spiritual outsourcing' catching on

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 28, 2004

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National

`Spiritual outsourcing' catching on

By K.P.M. Basheer

KOCHI, MARCH 27. The business process outsourcing (BPO) wave is not quite sweeping through Kerala as yet, but a different kind of outsourcing, from the U.S. and Europe is. Enter spiritual outsourcing.

Faced with a shortage of clergymen in their countries, Christians in the West are sending their prayer requests to Kerala's priests who are rated high for their faith and religious intensity. Requests for ``Mass Intentions'', which involve a fixed sum of money as fees, come by e-mail, telephone or regular post.

Mass Intentions relate to the living and the dead, for thanksgiving, forgiveness or requiem — which is a mass for the repose of the souls of the dead. The Mass is offered by a priest in a church.

The names and details of the intended beneficiary are sometimes announced in the congregation.

Since a priest can only offer one such mass a day, there is invariably a backlog of requests in Western churches, where a single priest sometimes has to take care of two or more parishes. The `outsourcing' exercise is meant to tackle the backlog.

Father Paul Thelakkat, a spokesman for the Synod of Bishops of the Syro-Malabar Church, told The Hindu that sending Mass Intentions to other countries has been in vogue for a long time as it is an accepted practice.

A young priest said that the e-mail facility had caused a tremendous increase in the number of such requests in the last few years.

A senior clergyman said that church bodies had formulated a code governing foreign Mass Intentions and the payment to be made.

In the past, Mass Intentions were sent in by an individual priest to one known to him. But now most such requests are routed through church bodies or bishops.

In some countries, church bodies or bishops collect requests from individuals and send them to one of the church bodies or a bishop in Kerala, who distribute them to priests on the basis of certain norms.

A Latin Catholic clergyman in the Varappuzha Archdiocese here said that the system was strictly regulated and monitored by the church.

Priests have to record the details of the Mass offered, to be submitted to his bishop.

Fr. Thelakkat said that in each country, the Bishops' Council determines the fee for a Mass Intention.

In Kerala, the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council has fixed it at Rs. 40. In Canada it is (Canadian) $ 5. When a Canadian sends a prayer request to a Kerala priest, he or she pays a minimum of $ 5.

Sometimes it is a source of additional income for the church, and also individual priests here.

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