The Sisters in Solidarity, a national forum of Catholic women in India, on February 6 demanded “absolute transparency and accountability” in the way the Church handles sex abuse cases.
The group, comprising religious and lay women, stresses revising canon law and the “theology of priesthood” to cleanse the Church of “elements that breed clericalism, which is an enabler of clerical sexual abuse.”
Such steps would prevent the recurrence of sexual harassment, abuse and abuse in the Church, asserts the solidarity in a letter sent to the Church hierarchy in the Vatican and India. The letter is written in the backdrop of the acquittal of Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar in the historic nun rape and the continued victimization of the accuser and her supporters.
The letter, signed by 15 women and endorsed by 1,263 men and women from around the world, expresses their deep concern and shock at the judgement and the court casting “aspersions on the character of the Sister survivor.”
Judge G Gopakumar of the Additional Sessions Court in Kerala’s Kottayam town on January 14 acquitted Bishop Mulakkal saying the prosecution had failed to prove the prelate’s guilt.
The accuser, a former superior general of the Missionaries of Jesus, a congregation under the diocese of Jalandhar, in June 2018 filed a police complaint alleging the bishop had sexually abused her multiple times between 2014 and 2016.
The group urges the Church authorities to keep Bishop Mulakkal away from any administrative responsibilities and spiritual leadership until the case is decided in appellate courts.
The defence lawyers in the case and groups such as the Save Our Sisters plan to appeal against the verdict in the Kerala High Court within two months’ time given by the trial court.
The group also also want the Church to keep Bishop Mulakkal away from Jalandhar lest he uses his “powerful influence to intimidate the sister survivor and her companions.”
All this will uphold the integrity and credibility of the Catholic Church, the women assert. They regret that the judgement over-looked that the bishop was “within a fiduciary relationship of power and authority over the victim as the patron of her congregation.”
The group says the judgment does not take into account the accuser’s “multiple vulnerabilities as a religious nun .Minor discrepancies in her statement are relied upon to project the survivor as a manipulator and a power hungry person who has filed a false complaint only to tarnish the image of the bishop at the instigation of his rivals.” Thereare are 1263 signitaries.
Daily Archives: February 15, 2022
Indian Christians seek legal remedy for decent burial
The top court in the western Indian state of Maharashtra has served notices on government officials seeking an explanation for the lack of burial grounds for Christians in Thane district.
The officials have been directed to file their replies on the contention that local Christians lacked sufficient space for burying their dead made in a public interest litigation by Melwyn Fernandes, a member of the Association of Concerned Catholics.
The bench of Chief Justice V.G. Bisht of Bombay High Court in its Jan. 31 order asked the officials to file their affidavits on or before March 11.
Christians in Thane, adjoi-ning the state capital Mumbai, formerly Bombay, are facing a severe lack of burial grounds, though some 10 plots of government land are earmarked for Christian cemeteries, Fernandes told on Feb. 2.
A right to information query filed by him revealed the reserved plots were located in Kalwa, Kopari, Navpada, Dawale and Daighar under the Thane Municipal Corporation, which had failed to allot them to the community.
Fernandes said these plots were now “either encroached by slum dwellers or handed over to builders, apparently in connivance with the government officials.” Christians, he said, approached the local authorities for releasing these reserved plots to the community but to no avail. “I was thus forced to move the high court seeking its intervention,” he said.
Removal of Christian hymn from India’s Republic Day ‘hurtful,’ archbishop says
Christian leaders in India have lamented the dropping of the hymn “Abide With Me” from the annual celebrations marking Republic Day. The song is traditionally played during the Beating Retreat that takes place on Jan. 29, three days after Republic Day, which is observed Jan. 26.
The Beating Retreat is a special performance by military bands common in former British colonies belonging to the Commonwealth of Nations.
“Abide With Me” – written by Scottish composer Henry Francis Lyte in 1847 – was the favorite Christian hymn of Mahatma Gandhi and has been a fixture in the Beating Retreat ceremony since 1950. It is famous for being played at Elizabeth II’s wedding to Prince Philip in 1947 and is said to have been played by the band on the Titanic as the ship sunk in 1912.
The Christian hymn was dropped by Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi in favor of Kavi Pradeep’s “Aye Mere Watan Ke Logon,” a patriotic song written after the 1962 India-China war.
Government officials have said there was no reason to play a British hymn 75 years after independence, despite its connecting to Gandhi. Archbishop Emeritus of Guwahti, Thomas Menamparampil, told Crux that an average Indian would “be severely hurt at any effort to downgrade the image of Mahatma Gandhi,” who popularized “Abide With Me” in India. “And yet there is fringe element in Indian society today that is dead set on doing precisely this.
Inequality kills,’ Oxfam report reminds India
The poor became poorer while the rich became richer in India during 2021, says a survey by Oxfam International.
Indian billionaires increased their wealth by 39 percent in 2021 and are getting richer at a much faster pace, but the poor saw their annual income drop by 53 percent and are still struggling to earn a minimum wage and access quality education and health care, the report revealed. Titled “Inequality Kills: India Supplement 2022,” the report said that the richest 98 Indians own the same wealth as the bottom 555 million people.
Indian billionaires grew from 102 in 2020 to 142 in 2021 even though the country witnessed yet another year of pandemic. This was also the year when the share of the bottom 50 percent of the population in national wealth was a mere 6 percent.
The combined wealth of the richest 100 Indians on the Forbes list stands at more than half a trillion US dollars. There were only three women among the 100 richest Indians.
India had the third-highest number of billionaires in the world, just behind China and the United States. It now has more billionaires than France, Sweden and Switzerland combined; indeed, there was a 39 percent increase in the number of billionaires in India in 2021. In 2020, India’s top 10 percent held close to 45 percent of the country’s national wealth. The Oxfam report once again confirmed that while India is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, it is also one of the most unequal countries with inequality continuing to rise sharply for the last three decades.
Since 2015, more and more of India’s wealth has gone to its richest one percent. Globally, too, wealth increased during 2021 to make the world’s billionaire elite richer when common people struggled against the pandemic for the second consecutive year.
“The massive gap between rich and poor will continue to increase to unimaginable proportions if the elected representatives of people in parliament do not take their job seriously,” said A.C. Michael, convener of the United Christian Forum. This deliberate inequality was bound to continue, said Michael, a former member of Delhi Minorities Commission.
“The massive gap between rich and poor will continue to increase to unimaginable proportions if the elected representatives of people in parliament do not take their job seriously,” said A.C. Michael, convener of the United Christian Forum.Top of Form
Vatican ambassador to India insists caste plays no role in bishop selection
In a statement sent to Crux, the Apostolic Nunciature in India said it wanted to make “clarifications” about a February 2 meeting of the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM) with the Apostolic Nuncio, Italian Archbishop Leo-poldo Girelli.
Dalits were formerly known as “Untouchables,” the lowest level on the Hindu caste system. In India, it is common for caste discrimination to exist even in non-Hindu religions, including Christianity.
The DCLM had said it was “highly disappointed” with the meeting, which touched on the situation of the Church in the jurisdictions of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, a former French colony that was taken over by India in 1954. Dalit Catholics comprise about 70 percent of the Catholics in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, but there is only one Dalit bishop now among the 18 dioceses in this region. During their meeting with the nuncio, the DCLM stated that much progress was made in the appointment of bishops between 1993-2007, when four Dalit bishops were appointed in Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu.
“It all happened only because of the conscious decisions and efforts of then Apostolic Nuncios and the Vatican Dicasteries concerned. It was a historical moment for the Dalit Catholics,” the Dalit group said in a letter given to the nuncio.
“But unfortunately, in the next fifteen years from 2007, even this progress initiated was reversed by the two Nuncios during this period and so we are now left with only one Dalit Bishop representing the Dalit Catholics who comprise more than 70 percent of the Catholics here. Your Excellency, we recall to you that historical moment, only to appeal that this progress initiated is continued now during your tenure,” the letter continued.
Thousands join campaign against anti-conversion laws in India
Thousands of people cutting across religions have demanded the repeal of all anti-conversion laws in India.
The demand comes ahead of February 14 when the Karnataka government plans to table the Anti-Conversion Bill in the state’s Upper House.
Prominent signatories of the petition to the Indian president of India included among others Admiral L Ramdas, former Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy, Mallika Sara-bhai, accomplished dancer and choreographer, Medha Patkar, social activist, Anand Patwardhan, film Maker and Mani Shankar Aiyar, former federal minister.
They assert the new anti-conversion law is unnecessary, since the Indian Constitution has enough provisions to curtail fraudulent religious convers-ions. ‘Wherever the anti-con-version law, ironically officially called Freedom of Religion Act, was passed, it became a justification for the persecution of the minorities and other marginalized identities” the petitioners explain.
They also say the attacks on the minorities has grown sharply in recent years since this law was used as a weapon targeting the dignity of Christians and Muslims particularly belonging to Adivasis, Dalits and women.
The petition urged people to join the campaign to defend the values enshrined in the Indian Constitution and protect human rights of the minorities and other marginalized sections in India.
Indian minorities laud court order on interfaith marriage
An order by a top court in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh upholding an interfaith marriage has been welcomed by minority communities.
The Jabalpur bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court confirmed the rights of a Hindu woman married to a Muslim man while preventing the government from criminalizing the marriage by invoking the anti-conversion law.
The order delivered on Jan. 28 was welcomed by Father Maria Stephen, public relations officer of the Catholic Church in Madhya Pradesh, and Maulana Umar Quasim, a Muslim cleric.
Judge Nandita Dubey’s order came in response to a habeas corpus petition by Gulzar Khan seeking custody of his wife who had been con-fined in a house by her parents and other relatives after they were informed of their marri-age and her religious conversion.
The court in its order held the young woman was a grown-up and had willingly married a person after converting to Islam. “She has made a categorical statement that she was never forced into conversion and whatever she has done was as per her own wishes,” it said.
The government’s lawyer had sought that the marriage should be declared “null and void” as it was not legally tenable under the provisions of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2021.
Odisha: Church caught in dispute reopens after 22 years
A Catholic parish was reopened for the public after 22 years in the eastern Indian state of Odisha with the help of the civil authorities.
The Chandiput parish of the diocese of Berhampur was closed after a priest refused to accept his transfer and stayed on defying the local bishop.
On February 2, the parish celebrated its feast with its parishioners.
“It was a moment of great joy to celebrate Mass in the church after nine years,” Fr Kabiraj Bastaray, the current parish priest, told on February 3.
He was appointed the Chandiput parish priest in 2013, but could not enter the church or presbytery as its former priest Joseph Pani refused to vacate the place.
“I have been staying in a house offered by the villagers and offering Mass in an open space or in a convent,” he explained.
Plight of Israel’s Christians neglected in Jewish-Muslim conflict
Israel’s Christian population is fast dwindling while those of Jews and Muslims continue to grow, giving credence to the fears that a plan to expel Christians is underway in the Jewish state.
The growth rate of Christians in Israel is much slower than those of Jews and Muslims. In 1949, when Israel was recognized as a UN member nation, there were 34,000 Christians. They increased only fivefold in the past 70 years to 180,000 in 2019. But during the same period, Muslims in Israel grew 14 times to number 1.6 million and Jews grew some six times to number 6.69 million in 2019, says a report of the Israeli Statistics Office released last month.
The Druze, another religious minority in the Jewish state, increased almost tenfold from 15,000 to 143,000 in 2019. The report noted that the falling number of Christians is due to the lower growth rate. The Christian growth rate was 1.9 percent, the lowest. The average growth rate was 2.43 for Jewish families and 2.60 for Muslim families, it said.
The lower growth rate of the Christian community in Israel is attributed to the violence due to the Palestine crisis. Often, their plight is overlooked as two main communities — Jews and Muslims — fight each other. As the fringe elements in both communities have become active in the last decade, Christians are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The largest Arab Christian population centres are Nazareth (21,400), Haifa (16,500) and Jerusalem (12,900). According to the report, 84 percent of Christians are satisfied with their life in Israel. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 76.7 percent of Christians in Israel are Palestinian Arabs, who mainly live in the northern part of the country with more than 21,000 Christians in Nazareth.
Priest’s killing signals return of fear for Pakistani Christians
The daylight attack by motor-cycle-riding gunmen on two Christian priests, killing one and wounding another, has reignited fears among Pakistan’s beleaguered minority community.
The priests were attacked as they drove home from a Sunday service in the north-western city of Peshawar on Jan. 30,
“We want to convey a positive message. We stand in solidarity with our Christian brothers,” said Tahir Ashrafi, special representative on religious affairs to Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Ashrafi sought to assure Pakistan’s Christians that the prime minister was personally overseeing the matter, calling it “an attack on Pakistan.”
“This isn’t an issue of one community or a pastor. It is an attempt to spread fear and defame the country. Blood in churches, mosques and sacrifices of our soldiers led to peace,” he said at a press conference.
Christian activists slammed Ashrafi’s presser. “This is an eyewash. The nation is tired of condemnations. We demand arrest of the murderers and their punishment,” said Samson Salamat, chairman of Rwadari Tehreek.
Human rights lawyer Nadeem Anthony called it a political stunt. “The cleric is trying to mislead the ongoing investigation. They [the government] are trying to escape the responsibility of protecting the innocent and vulnerable community,” he told.
“It is a pity that the new year started with this heinous hate attack. The country has been hijacked by Islamists who want Islamization in the country and are openly propagating faith-based hatred,” Anthony said.