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510 BENEDICT VADAKKEKARA was also the express wish of the Propaganda Fide, he added. He solicited their wholehearted cooperation in bringing to fruition the Order's effort at carrying out its mandate 26 . At this meeting an eight-point course of action for the everyday functioning of the Novitiate, the Conventio inter Superiores Regulares circa Novitiatum etjuvenes qui Ordinem ingrediuntur, was chalked out and approved. Fr John Baptist was elected Commissary and the other four Regular Superiors were made Councillors. The Commissary was granted ample faculties vis-a-vis the Novitiate2 7 • The scope of the Novitiate was incisively circumscribed as "the first step in a vaster scheme to be developed in the course of time, by which the Order will take root in India and spread itself through the country. Hence there must be no colour or race distinctions". In contradistinction from its homonymous of Mussoorie, the Novitiate of Sardhana was not to be a nursery for raising col– laborators for the missionaries, but was intended to be embryonically an autonomous Capuchin Province of India. It was also specified that "in the Sardhana Novitiate there be no mitigation of the Constitutions" and that "the mode of life ought to be European, not Indian". Though "the common lan– guage of communication ought to be English", the Indian friars were to be equipped to enter into the field of evangelization also and so in the Novitiate "a beginning ought to be made in the study of the vernacular, including Persian [Urdu]". "In the matter of fast and abstinence, the observance of them could be 26 At a distance of two decades, that is, in 1942 Fr John Baptist, by then a former Regular Superior and Commissary for the Novitiate, wrote a "modest report" to trace the story of the Novitiate and the Study, under the title: "Sunto storico de! Commissario Generate deg!i Studi ne!le Indie Orienta!i now in the APCapTusc, Missione Indostatr. "Da Allahabad [tl Generale] si port<'> in Agra ai primi del 1922. Quivi tenne una conferenza a tutti i Superiori Regolari delle nostre Missioni, manifestando il desiderio di istituire un Commissariato, per incominciare a formare una nuova Provincia Cappuccina Indiana e cosi supplire alla deficienza de! personale delle Missioni, seguendo l'esempio degli altri Ordini e Congregazioni Religiose, specialmente femminili. Tale incremento era ben veduto anche dalla Congregazione di Propaganda Fide". 27 AGCap G 68, II, Novizjato e Stud.to: the letter installing the Commissary in office is dated 17 February 1922: "... Facultates, quas tibi ad muneris tui officium explendum concedi– mus, eae sunt, quas congrua congruis comparando, habent Superiores Majores pro Provinciae suae regimine. Quatuor quoque tibi assignamus Consiliarios seu Assistentes, ad quod officium eligimus et deputamus Superiores Regulares Missionum nostrarum Simlae, Lahore, Allahabad et Ajmer. Horum consilio et consensu tibi utendum erit eo modo et ratione, qua Superiores Majores Provinciales suo utuntur Definitorio. In tua e Missione absentia, vices tuas gerat qui Te in Superioris officiis supplet".