Come the start of the monsoon season next month, hundreds of fishing trawlers will come to a standstill for 45 days on the shores of the Arabian Sea in the southern Indian state of Kerala. The annual ban on mechanised fishing during the breeding season to conserve fish stocks is a legacy of the Redemptorist priest, Fr Thomas Kocherry, who died of a heart attack last week aged 73.Fr Kocherry rose from being a tenacious campaigner for poor fishing families in Kerala to international status representing communities whose livelihoods were threatened from industrial fishing fleets and marine pollution caused by energy companies.Born the fifth of 11 children, he was ordained as a Redemptorist priest in 1971. He began work in a small village in Punthura parish in Kerala. He fulfilled literally t
08 May 2014, The Tablet
Obituary – Fr Thomas Kocherry CSsR
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