Bp. Benziger

Aloysius Maria Benzinger O.C.D. (1864-1942, born Adelrich Ludwig), Swiss clergyman, in the years 1905-1931 Bishop of Quilon in India (now Kollam), in the prelatic dress characteristic of a hierarch originating from the Carmelite order, i.e. in a brown cassock and a white ferraiolo. In 1890, two years after taking solemn vows, he set off on a mission to India, where he immediately became a professor at the seminary in Puthanpalli. He soon became the private secretary of the apostolic delegate to the East Indies, Archbishop Władysław Zaleski, from whom he received episcopal consecration in 1900. Five years later, after the unfortunate death of the previous Bishop of Quilon, as a coadjutor of this diocese, he became its shepherd. A great meritorious man for his flock, he also had a significant influence, thanks to his interest in Jacobite liturgy, on the conversion to the Catholic Church of the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church Bishop George John Chrysostom (Geevarghese Mar Ivanios), from whom he accepted the Catholic confession of faith in 1930. A year later, due to his poor health, Pope Pius XI accepted his resignation and gave him the titular archbishopric of Antinoe in Egypt. He spent his retirement in a Carmelite monastery in Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram), where he died at the age of 78.