The current St. Sebastian, Church Parish Pastoral Council completes 6 years in office. This PPC of the St. Sebastian, Church will remain in office till the installation of the new re-constituted PPC, Which will be in June 2024.
The Parish Pastoral Council is the main pastoral body of the Parish, representing all sections of the People of God in the Parish and meant to function as the principle form of collaboration, dialogue and discernment at the Parish level, under the guidance of the Parish Priest. It is consultative in its nature and its purpose is to promote communion in the parish.
The first step taken by our parish priest Rev. Fr. Andrew Pereira was to create an awareness and conscientise the faithful about the nature of the PPC, their duties, and most importantly the requirements for anyone to be a member of the council. The requirements are: To become a member of the Parish Pastoral Council, one should be:

• At least 18 years of age
• Habitually residing in the parish.
• A practicing Catholic, having good moral reputation
• Open to the Magisterium of the Church, particularly to the vision of the Vatican II and of the Diocesan Synod 2002
• Respectful of the Ecclesiastical Authority
• Committed to serve in the parish, especially at the Somudai/ Ward level
• A regular participant in the formation program organised prior to the establishment of the Council.

The Conscientisation was carried out during the Sunday Masses Homily for three consecutive Sundays with power point presentation effectively explained both by The Parish priest Fr. Andrew Pereira and the Assistant Parish priest Fr. Leslie Gomes. Besides the PPC ward members visited the homes in their respective wards and explained about the elections and how important it was for the parishioners to actively participate in the same.
Parishioners were requested to take active part in the reconstitution process, in selecting suitable representatives and to make it possible to offer their services to be members of the council.
The reconstitution process was as per the Constitution of the PPC and guidelines issued by the Pastoral Secretariat.
Thus in compliance of the above the Main Election Team(MET) consisting of PPC Executive Committee with Parish Priest as convener and including other co-opted members was constituted and accordingly the MET met to chalk out the plan to conduct the elections which were held from 15th October to 27th of October 2023. The dates were carefully selected keeping in mind the visits of Our Lady and the children’s exams, so that there was maximum participation from the wards.
The MET was further divided into two teams to expedite the process, Team A was led by the parish priest Fr. Andrew Pereira and Team B was led by Assistant Parish priest Fr. Leslie Gomes. The MET conducted a mock election at their meeting before setting out for the election of the reconstituted PPC.
The elections went on smoothly and at present the elected members await the formative sessions which will be conducted in a phased manner starting from November and most likely end in February 2024.

– Gladys Da Silva