History

The present Ahmedabad Diocese covers the entire area of the three civil districts of Ahmedabad, Anand and Nadiad. Areawise, Ahmedabad is the smallest of the four dioceses in Gujarat but with 63,962 Catholics Ahmedabad is the biggest diocese! Ahmedabad is also the oldest diocese in the state.

Historically too the Ahmedabad diocese has great significance. The freedom struggle was directed from the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad which was the headquarters of Gandhiji for meeting the leaders of the freedom movement and the British officials till he started the Dandi March on March 12, 1930. Karamsad in Anand District which comes within the boundaries of the Ahmedabad diocese was also the birth place of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the iron man of India.

The Ahmedabad Diocese has a long history. There are indications of Christians living at Khambhat and Ahmedabad from the beginning of the sixteenth century when the Portuguese arrived in Goa in 1510. All through the 19th century Catholics from outside the states have come and settled in several towns of Gujarat. Ahmedabad city had a church from 1842 at Sabarmati.

But the beginning of local Christians is traced to the baptism of 18 people at Mogri on December 11, 1893 by Fr Manuel Xavier Gomes, a diocesan priest from the Archdiocese of Bombay. A team of German and Swiss Jesuits followed Fr Gomes. Then came more diocesan priests followed by the Spanish Jesuits in 1922.

In 1934 the entire area of Gujarat State north of the Mahi river including Kathiawad and Kutch became the independent Ahmedabad mission separated from Bombay Archdiocese, with an Ecclesiastical Superior in the person of  Fr Joaquin Villallonga, SJ. There were only five mission stations in 1934 : Anand established in 1895, Vadtal in 1897, Karamsad in 1907, Nadiad in 1911 and Amod in 1914.

The Daughters of the Cross (FC) were the first congregation of nuns to start work in Gujarat from 1898. Then came the Sisters of The Apostolic Carmel (AC) to work in Gujarat in January 1923. They opened their first school at Ahmedabad in 1929. In 1936 a local congregation of the Little Daughters of St Francis Xavier (LD) was founded by a Jesuit Priest, Fr Carlos Suria in collaboration with Sr Xavier.

The steady growth of the Ahmedabad mission resulted in the establishment of the Ahmedabad Diocese on May 5, 1949 covering the entire Gujarat area north of the river Mahi much before the present Gujarat state was carved out of the Bombay state on May 1, 1960.