The Conference of Catholic Bishops of India or CCBI, is the national episcopal conference of the bishops of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church in India, functioning in accordance with canon 447. There are 132 Latin Catholic dioceses in the country, and 190 active and retired bishops are the members of the CCBI. This is the largest bishops' conference in Asia and the fourth largest in the world. The CCBI is a member of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences. The Conference of Catholic Bishops of India enables the Latin Catholic bishops of the country to exchange ideas and information, deliberate on the Church's broad concerns and take care of the pastoral needs of the faithful. The conference is to assist the bishops both in pastoral care and in evangelization, the twin duties of a bishop. One of the main purposes of the CCBI according to its statutes is "to promote that greater good which the Church offers humankind especially through forms and programmes of the apostolate which are adequately adapted to the circumstances of time and place." Historical background In 1944 a conference of Indian bishops known as Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) was established. When the national episcopal conferences got the juridical and structural recognition during Vatican II, the CBCI began to reorganize itself with infrastructures such as national commissions, regional councils of bishops and national organizations working under its guidance and directives. The promulgation of the Latin 1983 Code of Canon Law in 1983 contributed to the debate about establishing a conference only for the Latin rite bishops. Pope John Paul II, after his visit to India in 1986, wrote an apostolic letter to the Indian bishops on 28 May 1987. An important text of which reads thus: "The bishops of each of the three rites have the right to establish their own episcopal bodies in accordance with their own ecclesiastical legislation. The CBCI which is an assembly of the bishops of India of the three rites is to continue for matters of common concern and of national and supra-ritual character. These areas are to be determined in the new statues of the CBCI". In compliance with the pope's directive, the CBCI in its general meeting in April 1988 decided that all the three ritual churches could have their own episcopal bodies. Accordingly, the bishops of the Latin Church started their own episcopal conference in