Many passersby take the Sacred Heart Cathedral as just another roadside Church, but it has a very interesting history which has been compiled into a soon to be published book by Father Augustine Kuriapilly, the scholarly Catholic priest of Delhi. Here are some excerpts from it:
Akbar the Great sent a delegation to Goa in 1578, requesting the Portuguese Viceroy to send a team of learned Catholic priests to his Ibadat Khana in Fatehpur-Sikri, where he held discussions on religions. On November 17, 1579, the Viceroy and the Jesuit Provincial in Goa selected three priests for his Court. The three set out from Goa. They travelled by primitive modes of transport and arrived at Fatehpur-Sikri on February 28, 1580. Akbar received from them a copy of the Bible with profound reverence.
The Jesuit Mission was entrusted to the Carmelities after 1773. Two Carmelities from Bombay, Fr. Agnelo di San Giuseppe and Fr. Gregorio della Presentation, took charge of it. Fr. Agnelo stayed for a little while before he left. Fr. Gregorio worked in Delhi for a longer period under the Capuchins. He died on September 29, 1807.
After the reign of Jehangir the mission of the Jesuits moved out of Agra and spread its wings to such far off regions of the Indian subcontinent as the Tibet-Hindustan Mission in 1760. The first group of Capuchins reached Tibet from Kathmandu in 1707 and started working there. It operated from Lhasa for about four decades until a religious persecution forced the priest to give up their mission in April 1745 and return to Kathmandu. The Mission of Nepal was abandoned in 1769, following an invasion. The Capuchin Fathers then settled down at Chuhari, near Bettiah in Bihar. In 1820, the Vicariate Apostolic of Tibet-Hindustan was constituted and in 1845 it was renamed Vicariate Apostolic of Agra. On February 7, the same year it was bifurcated to form two Vicariates: Agra and Patna Monsignor Maria Zenobio Benucci was made the first Vicar Apostolic of Agra, which embraced the whole of North India from Sind to Bengal; earlier in 1723, Fr. Ippolyto Desideri of Tibet-Hindustan Mission was posted in Delhi. He built a church and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary. The church was blessed on All Souls’ Day (November 2) the same year. That was the beginning of the first Catholic Church in Delhi. The Sacred Heart Cathedral was only the second one. The gap between the construction of St. Mary’s Church, built after the Mutiny by Fr. William Keegan, and Sacred Heart Cathedral was 70 years.
On February 11, 1919 the junior bishop to Archbishop Raphael of Agra, Dr Evangelisti Vanni sent Fr. Luke Vannucci to Delhi as parish priest of St. Mary’s Church and Chaplain to the British Armed forces garrisoned there. After getting the blessing of the saintly Padre Pio he arrived in Delhi in April 1919. During the year of his arrival itself Fr. Luke renovated St. Mary’s Church and the Rectory in Old Delhi. In 1920 he purchased the plot of land wherein stands the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. The plot measured 14,022 acres. The then Government leased it in perpetuity to Agra Archdiocese for a consideration of ₹7,000.00 and the Archdiocese of Delhi which inherited the land pays annual ground rent for it now. Fr. Luke was indebted to many generous persons, among them the Vicerine Lady Willingdon. Sir Malcom Hailey, Governor of the United Provinces, helped him to obtain an interest-free loan of ₹ 60,000.00. Eight architects were invited to submit plans for the Cathedral and Sir Edward Lutyens consented to be on the panel of the jury. The plan submitted by Henry Medd was finally selected. Archbishop Vanni blessed the land and laid the foundation stone in 1929 and construction started in 1930 and completed in 1935.
Uncertain location
One day an unknown young man came to meet Fr. Luke. He left after delivering a short message: “Withdraw your money from the bank for it is going to crash!” Fr. Luke withdrew his building fund from the Alliance Bank. The day after the bank indeed crashed.
Fr. Kuriapilly, however, has not mentioned that the Cathedral could have actually come up in Delhi Cantonment, where land for it was donated by a European Commander of Maharaja Scindia’s forces, as large areas in Delhi were still in the possession of Gwalior State since the time of the Mughals. As a matter of fact, Madhadji Scindia was the virtual ruler during the later reign of Shah Alam as he had taken the “Blind Emperor” under his protection in the 18th Century. So the Marathas were the controlling force in Delhi. Serving them were several Europeans, among them were Gen De Boigne, Gen Perron, Capt Pedron, Col Salvador Smith, Col Skinner, an Anglo-Indian, and the Italian Antonio Reghilini, architect of Begum Samru’s church in Sardhana, near Meerut and, of course, the Commander who was the Cathedral benefactor.
However, the British wanted to build a cantonment for their troops on the land leased by the Scindias to the Commander. So they gave him the option of taking the same size plot (enlarged by Fr. Luke’s efforts) in the new Capital of Raisina, and that happened to be the one on which the Cathedral came up. Incidentally, the spot where Maria Bhavan is situated was once the bungalow of the Ranger of Raisina Forest, around which wild animals roamed about. Just imagine where now the church bells chime and hymns are sung during Mass the wailing howls of the wolves, the unnerving laugh of the hyena and the bone-chilling cries of jackals rent the air both by day and night! Isn’t then the big change in the ambience of the Cathedral cause for wonder? Fr. Kuriapilly may well be mumbling, “Praise the Lord”. As he crosses himself during daily Mass.