St. Joseph Church, Belman
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The story of St. Joseph Church, Belman
St. Joseph Church, Belman is a Roman Catholic parish church in Belmannu, and its parish was founded in 1894. It stands in the Latin rite, with mass celebrated in Konkani and bilingual Kannada masses held on certain feast days, and its parish belongs to the Archdiocese of Bangalore. The parish counts about 2,600 Catholics in about 540 families, divided into 21 wards.
Its story began earlier, when permission was granted on 29 November 1886 by Bishop Nicholas Maria Pagani S.J. for a chapel at Belman. After other locations were considered, Madkamane, owned by a Brahmin family and adjacent to the present-day church, was chosen, and construction began in 1887. The chapel was financed by the Mathias family and was completed in seven years. On 10 September 1894, Pagani granted permission to consecrate it, and his decree made Belman a separate parish and assigned Nicholas Carneiro of St. Francis Xavier Church in Shirva to extend his duties here. Carneiro blessed the chapel on the same day.
The early chapel was a simple structure with mud walls and a thatched hay roof. Under later parish leadership, the church community developed its own institutions and links: Nicholas Carneiro founded an elementary school in 1896, which later became St. Joseph's Higher Primary School, and had the present Shirva-Belman road built. Rosario P. B. Lewis later arranged for Emmanuel Vas to become resident parish priest after a meeting on 15 March 1904. Between 1903 and 1914, a small cemetery was developed next to the chapel. Emmanuel Vas began an improved rectory, established a post office there, the region's first, and implemented construction of the present-day Belman-Mundkur road.
St. Joseph Church is also part of the wider Christian history of the area, where missionaries entered in the 16th century and the surviving communities later settled into parishes. A parish newsletter, The Staff of St. Joseph, continues the parish life, and Baptist Mudartha, former bishop of Allahabad, comes from this parish.