Satara is a town along the S. M. Line 77 miles south of Poona and about 30 miles by road from Mahableshwar. Ti11 1848 it was the capital of the Maratha Rajah, direct descendant of Shivaji and hereditary head of the Maratha Confederacy. Among the places visited from the Poona "City Chapel" from 1912, "Satur" is mentioned; which presumably is a corruption of Satara. In any case it was on account of Goans connected with the court that a chapel of Our Lady of Health was built in 1841, and was at first visited from Poona (to which Varado it was assigned), and afterwards served by a resident Goan priest.

In 1850 Satara became the headquarters of a civil district; and a body of British troops was settled here, who from the year 1851 were visited once a fortnight by the Chaplain of Kirkee. In 1861 however Father J.B.M. D'Souza was appointed resident chaplain by the Vicar-Apostolic. Coming from Kolhapur he bought a grass-roofed building which he turned into a chapel, with a priest's room and a reading room for the soldiers, retaining the same as his own property. When the number of troops was diminished in 1886 the chaplaincy was discontinued, and he sold his property and left the place. For a short time the station was visited by one or other Father from Poona, and Mass was said for the soldiers in a school room.

During the whole of this period the Goan chapel had subsisted side by side with the military chaplain's "grass-roofed buildings", and served by a resident priest from Goa under Padroado.

When by the Concordat settlement in 1887 the double jurisdiction was ruled out at Satara, the Goan priest left for Goa. The chapel of Our Lady of Health was locked, and the Goan congregation refused to attend the service held by the Propaganda priest in a temporary chapel elsewhere. The sudden death of one Pinto, the ringleader of the Goans, by cholera, seems to have frightened them into submission. Then the chapel was opened for Father Peter from Poona to say Mass in. The church furniture was taken from Pinto's house where it had been stored up. At once the chapel was repaired at the Bishop's expense.

In 1888 the compound was extended by a grant of Government land, and a room for the priest erected. Jesuit chaplains continued to come down from Poona for the British troops, but in 1888 or 1889 Father Lobo, a secular priest, was appointed for the care of the parish. In 1898 Father Lobo partly pulled the old chapel down and built a new one in its place, adding priest’s rooms. The chapel was completed in 1900 and in 1901 Father Da Vida was chaplain till 1905.

Today there is a resident priest in Satara catering to the spiritual needs of the catholics in the Satara area.

Parish Priest: Fr Joe Palliparambil

ADDRESS:

Our Lady of Health Church,
Camp, Satara 415 001
Tel (02162) 237799