In view of Nov. 2 All Souls Day, Catholic Church officials in Goa have advised not to use plastic and other toxic items to decorate graves to beat pollution and to safeguard environment.
The Church’s social welfare wing Caritas, in a letter to all parish priests and chaplains in the state, said these items should be shunned particularly on the occasion of All Souls Day, when Catholics visit and decorate their ancestors’ graves and pray for the departed souls.
Inside a two-story building within the crowded Bakshi Nagar area of Jammu and Kash-mir state, 35-year-old Emma-nuel Appan is preparing break-fast for aged and abandoned charity home residents in his care. Wearing a T-shirt and with a rosary around his neck, the young Catholic layman hands out cups of tea. It has been more than a year since Appan volunteered to work at the Little Teresa Home for the elderly and destitute managed by a charity called “Friends of Birds of the Air.” This charity movement, began operating some 25 years ago in southern Kerala state and has since spread to most other states. The Little Teresa Home opened three years ago. It provides food, shelter and medical care as well as emotional support to residents, who are mostly aged between 70-80.
“I choose this life for me and I am in love with it.” “God has made me a multi-tasked person,” he says light-heartedly. Fr Boby John of Jammu-Srina-gar Diocese, who heads the Little Teresa Home, praised the selfless efforts of volunteers such as Appan.
Catholic bishops have joined indigenous people in Jharkhand to oppose a planned corridor for wild life as it threatens to displace thousands of people in 214 villages. The govt. has identified 296 hectares of land plans to build a “wild life corridor” for elephants over four districts in the state. Bp Vincent Barwa said the plan is difficult for people to understand “because on one hand the government claims to be acting to protect the forest and tribal people, but on the other it moves to displace them.” Bishop Barwa, said the pro-Hindu government has made to marginalize tribal people and take over their lands on behalf of industrial companies.
