Media Release
Mangaluru, Jan 27: The Bondel parish honoured five editors who had steered the parish monthly magazine, Bondelchem Bonder, which entered its silver jubilee year. Mainly in Konkani, two years ago it had added a four-page English section as a token of recognition of non-Konkani parishioners.
The five editors, in chronological order, are Richard (Richie) Pereira, Stany Alvares, Joseph Francis D’Souza (Zuse Master/Mestri), longest editor with a tenure of 15 years, Lancy D’Cunha and the current editor Wilfred (Wilfie) Alvares. Fr Andrew Leo D’Souza, parish priest lauded and thanked the editors of Bondelchem Bonder which emerged as the main bonding link among the 1,100 parish families.
To mark the occasion, Fr Andrew released a specially designed high-end cloth bag meant for storing 36 issues before binding into annual volumes and making place for new issues.
The idea of holding bags was conceived and sponsored by John Monteiro, who handles the English section of the magazine and got it designed and sourced by Titus Noronha of Rahul Advertisers – gratis. John Monteiro donated 1200 bags – also to take care of potential new families migrating to Bondel parish – in memory of his wife, Lynette, who passed away in August 2017 and whose platinum jubilee would have been on January 24.
After releasing the first bag and presenting it to the first editor, Fr Andrew invited John Monteiro, his son Mohan, Mohan’s wife Niesha and their daughter Maya to present the holding bags, garland the editors and drape shawls on the rest of the editors.
Speaking on the sideline of the function, John Monteiro, veteran journalist and author, said that he was pained to realize that the church magazine, lovingly produced by an editorial team at great expense of designing, layout and printing was thoughtlessly discarded by many without realizing its abiding reference value. Because of the expensive fabric selected, screen-printing of conservation message and photo imposition, the unit cost was Rs 50+. But, he says, parishes wishing to have their magazines conserved can resort to more economical mode.