An Indian origin Jesuit priest is credit for introducing to devotion to the Mother Mary of Vailankanni in the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
Father James Bharataputra has been serving the Church in Indonesia for the past 50 years. The 84-year-old priest is credited with the construction of the Marian shrine “Graha Maria Annai Velangkanni” in Medan, the capital of the province of North Sumatra.
The island of Sumatra is inhabited mainly by indigenous groups and where traditionalist Islam is widespread.
Father James, as he is popularly known, was born in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He was naturalized as an Indonesian in 1989.
Father James says he nurtured the desire to become a mission since he joined the Madurai province of the Jesuits. He was sent to Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to complete his theological studies. After his ordination in 1970, he visited Medan and the then Capuchin Archbishop Van den Hurk of Medan asked him to provide pastoral care to a small local Tamil-speaking Catholic community.
Daily Archives: January 27, 2023
Women who lived as sex slaves to an Indian goddess
Dedicated to an Indian goddess as a child, Huvakka Bhimappa’s years of sexual servitude began when her uncle took her virginity, raping her in exchange for a saree and some jewelry.
Bhimappa was not yet 10 years old when she became a “devadasi” — girls coerced by their pa-rents into an elaborate wedding ritual with a Hindu deity, many of whom are then forced into illegal prostitution.
Devadasis are expected to live a life of religious devotion, forbidden from marrying other mortals, and forced at puberty to sacrifice their virginity to an older man, in return for money or gifts.
“In my case, it was my mother’s brother,” Bhimappa, now in her late 40s, told.
What followed was years of sexual slavery, earning money for her family through encounters with other men in the name of serving the goddess.
Bhimappa eventually escaped her servitude but with no edu-cation, she earns around a dollar a day toiling in fields.
Her time as a devotee to the Hindu goddess Yellamma has also rendered her an outcast in the eyes of her community.
She had loved a man once, but it would have been unthinkable for her to ask him to marry.
“If I was not a devadasi, I would have had a family and children and some money. I would have lived well,” she said.
Devadasis have been an integral part of southern Indian culture for centuries and once enjoyed a respectable place in society.
Many were highly educated, trained in classical dance and music, lived comfortable lives and chose their own sexual partners.
“This notion of more or less religiously sanctioned sexual slavery was not part of the original system of patronage,” historian Gayathri Iyer told AFP.
Iyer said that in the 19th century, during the British colonial era, the divine pact between devadasi and goddess evolved into an institution of sexual exploitation.
Indian Church hails menstrual leave for girl students
Christian leaders have hailed the move by a communist-led state government in India to introduce menstrual leave for female students in government-run higher education institutions.
They, however, were skeptical of the state government’s plan to provide 60 days maternity leave to students aged 18 and above in southern Kerala state.
“No doubt, the government’s decision to grant menstrual leave to college students is a highly appreciative move,” said Father Jacob G Palakkappilly, spokes-person of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC), the regional bishops’ forum.
The state’s higher education minister R Bindu announced the government order on Jan. 19.
She said the government order also allows a maximum of 60 days maternity leave to female students aged 18 and above.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reiterated in a social media post his government’s decision to ensure “gender fairness” in Kerala.
According to him, the decision would lead to a reduction of 2 percent in the mandatory com-pulsory attendance of 75 percent required for female students.
“It will be a big relief for female students who otherwise had no choice of seeking condonation of their absence from classes,” Father Palakkappilly told on January 23.
Indian Left party demands action on anti-Christian attacks
The attack on Christians in central India is part of a political agenda and not linked to religious conversion, says a communist party delegation after visiting the violence-hit areas of Chhattisgarh state.
Not a single case of forcible religious conversion is reported in the central state, where Hindu nationalist mobs are using it as a handle to unleash violence against tribal Christians, the delegation said.
“The propaganda of forcible conversions is not borne out by facts. According to officials, there is not a single case of forcible conversion reported,” a delegation of the Communist Party of India-Maxist (CPI-M) stated in a memorandum to the state’s Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel.
The memorandum said that there clearly seemed “a political agenda behind these attacks, given the schedule for elections to the state assembly later this year.”
The CPI-M delegation led by Politburo member, Brinda Karat, visited the violence-hit areas of Narayanpur, Kondagaon and Kanker districts on Jan. 20-22, and met victims of the violence, besides police and district officials.
The delegation found “unimaginable torture of victims,” especially women who were “stripped and beaten up” in public and bla-med the Congress government ruling Chhattisgarh for its inaction.
Cardinal Tagle to attend India’s Latin rite bishops’ plenary
Cardinal Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, head of the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization, will attend the 34th plenary assembly of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI), the national association of the country’s Latin rite prelates.
The January 24-25 annual plenary at Bengaluru’s St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences will address the theme, “Telling the Story of Jesus in our Context: The Synodal Way.”
On January 23, Cardinal Tagle, a Filipino prelate, visited leaders of other religions in Bengaluru city, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore and vicars general Monsignors S Jayanathan and C Francis accompanied the prelates.
They met Usman Sharieff, secretary Jumma Masjid Trust Board and other leaders of the Muslim community at Khadriya Masjid, Millers Road, under the Management of Jumma Masjid Trust Board.
Their next stop was at the ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) Temple at Rajajinagar where they exchanged pleasantries and matters of mutual interest with Madhu Pandit Dasa, temple president and chairman of the Akshya Patra.
At both places the Catholic prelates prayed for interreligious harmony, solidarity and fellowship, according to a press note from J A Kanthraj, the spokesperson of the Archdiocese of Bangalore.
Earlier on January 22, Cardinal Tagle was accorded a warm and affectionate welcome at the Bangalore international airport by a team led by Archbishop Machado. Others in the team were Fathers Stephen Alathara, CCBI deputy secretary general, Vignan Das, associate director Communio, Gabriel Christy and Vivek Basu.
The CCBI accounts for 132 of India’s 174 dioceses. It has 190 bishops, both active and retired, as members. It was set up as canonical national episcopal body to help India’s Latin rite bishops to exchange ideas and information, deliberate on the Church’s broad concerns and take care of the pastoral needs of the faithful.
Remembering the Asian theologian of ‘bits and pieces’
Filipino Jesuit Father Catalino Arevalo, whom many consider the “Father of Asian Theology,” died at the age of 97 on Jan. 18.
The Jesuit brought his own method into conversation with other theologians in the Philippines, recalls Vincentian Father Daniel Franklin Pilario, a theology pro-fessor in the Philippines. In the following tribute, Father Pilario provides excerpts from a 2004 article he wrote on the theology of Father Arevalo:
Theologians need to have a concrete grasp of the country’s main political and economic move-ments, so as to act on them in the spirit of the Gospel. This intrinsic connection of theology with time and historical circumstance can be discerned in Filipino Jesuit Father Catalino Arevalo’s theolo-gical method of “reading the signs of the times,” a term introduced by Vatican II.
Somewhere in his writings, Father Arevalo wrote: Ours is “a theology of bits and pieces gathered and scotch-taped together in hours of doing and suffering, in dialogue and confrontation, in reflec-tion and prayer, in emptiness, in confusion and paralysis — in all the times and seasons of Qoheleth, it would seem — in struggle, sometimes in anguish and despair, sometimes with the shedding of real blood and tears.”
Lai can’t be left to spend rest of his life in prison
The Lunar New Year, which began on Jan. 22, is traditionally a time for families to come together, share meals, visit relatives and take time off work. As people across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and many other parts of Asia and the world celebrate the Year of the Rabbit, many will have traveled long distances to reunite with their families.
But as this festival gets underway, let us remember those who cannot be with their loved ones — in particular, those in prison for their political or religious beliefs. And let us especially think of one prominent Catholic, the 75-year-old Hong Kong entrepreneur, publisher and pro-democracy campaigner, Jimmy Lai, who is spending his third Lunar New Year behind bars.
In December 2020, Lai was jailed, awaiting trial on multiple charges. He was briefly released on bail and was able to spend Christmas that year with his family, albeit under a form of house arrest, but on Dec. 31, 2020, his bail was reversed and he has been in prison ever since.
Late last year, on Dec. 10 — which is Human Rights Day — Lai was sentenced to almost six years’ imprisonment, on totally trumped-up fraud charges. He has already served two other sentences, one of 13 months for lighting a candle and saying a prayer at a vigil to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and another of 14 months for participating in a peaceful protest in 2019.
“If convicted, Lai may end up spending the rest of his life in jail”
But even worse is to come. His biggest trial — under Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law — begins in September this year, having been postponed from last year due to a wrangle over his choice of defense counsel. His chosen lawyer, British barrister Tim Owen, KC, was rejected by the Hong Kong government and his work permit was temporarily suspended, even though Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal had approved him.
Beijing has now given Hong Kong’s chief executive carte blanche to determine not only who the judge is in a National Security Law trial, but also who the defendant’s legal representative will be.
If convicted, Lai may end up spending the rest of his life in jail.
Paying people to have babies backfires in Japan
The Japanese government’s policy of increasing financial subsidies for families to have a baby has a long history. It is of course an attempt to address the country’s extremely low birth rate and aging population.
Japan has really tried everything, from providing couples with subsidies for marriage before the age of 40 to encouraging couples to spend more time at home and offering cheaper day-care. In fact, government funds have been heavily spent in recent years to wage war against the hedonism of single individuals with the aim of bringing about a demographic shift.
This time the subsidies that were going to be handed out were about US$400 to match the average price for giving birth at a clinic. And guess what? All those clinics on hearing the news that an unexpected bonus was coming their way have raised their prices accordingly.
So what the government accomplished was to effectively increase future taxation for its citizens, while at the present claiming it was all done with a pure heart and good intentions.
“Traditional family structure and traditional gender roles are slowly but surely coming under attack”
Pakistan tightens its already far-reaching blasphemy laws
The parliament of Pakistan moved this week to tighten its already far-reaching blasphemy laws, under which numerous Christians and other minorities have been prosecuted and subjected to mob violence, often for dubious charges of blasphemy against beliefs or figures associated with Islam.
Insulting the Prophet Muhammad is already, at least on paper, a capital offense in Pakistan. Under the newest legal changes, those convicted of insulting the Prophet Muhammad’s wives, companions, or close relatives will now face 10 years in prison, a sentence that can be extended to life, along with a fine of 1 million rupees, or roughly $4,500, reported the New York Times. It also makes the charge of blasphemy an offense for which bail is not possible.
Islam is the state religion of Pakistan, and blasphemy laws have been on the books in the country for more than a century, even before it became an independent nation. A notable escalation of the country’s blasphemy laws occurred in 1987 when the death sentence was made mandatory for some violations.
One of the most famous cases in recent years was that of Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman who spent nearly a decade on death row after being accused of disparaging Islam. Numerous world leaders called for her immediate release, including Popes Benedict XVI and Francis.
Worship places attacked, Myanmar religious leaders appeal for restraint
In the wake of rising attacks against places of worship, senior religious leaders of Myanmar have appealed for restraint citing international pacts that call for the protection of places of worship, places of learning, and places of healing.
In the latest attack, a church, bell tower and other buildings of Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral at Mandalay in Upper Myanmar were destroyed on January 15.
Government soldiers, an eyewitness revealed, also “desecrated” the place by “looting, drinking alcohol and smoking” inside.
The destroyed church is a historical and cultural heritage for the entire country, including Buddhists since 1894.
Also ,in the January 15 attack, a century-old convent of the Franciscan Sisters was set on fire by the military.
In addition, five out of 16 dioceses in the country — Loikaw, Pekhon, Hakha, Kalay and Mandalay — are affected by the ongoing conflicts between the army and ethnic rebel groups, some of whose members belong to various Christian denominations.
On January 21, in his message to the faithful published on the occasion of Chinese New Year, Archbishop of Yangon Cardinal Charles Maung Bo declared January as the “month of the ceasefire,” asking all parties – including the military – to “silence their weapons” and “believe in a peaceful solution.”
The cardinal, who is also the president of the Federation of Asia Bishops’ Conferences, emphasized the value of ‘dialogue’ in conflict resolution and called for the resumption of the Panlong peace process.
“Why are these sacred places attacked and destroyed?” ask archbishops of Yangon, Mandalay and Taunggyi in the open letter entitled “Peace is a pilgrimage, let us walk it together.”