Two new Catholic bishops appointed, one retires in India

Two bishops were appointed and one retired on February 4 in the Indian Catholic Church.
Pope Francis appointed Father Wilbert Marwein as the bishop of Nongstoin, a diocese in the northern Indian state of Meghalaya, and Father James Shekhar as the bishop of Buxar diocese in Bihar.
The Pope on the same day accepted the resignation Bishop Devadass Ambrose Mariadoss of Thanjavur diocese in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The ball is in the court of Rajasthan’s Congress government

A four-century-old chapel in western India dating back to the Portuguese colonial era faces a threat of demolition as the administration aims to acquire land to turn it into a football stadium, local Catholics say.
Catholic leaders say the chapel of Our Lady Of Remedies in Daman faces threat due to a controversial beautification drive planned by Praful Patel, the administrator and a leader of the pro-Hindu Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
Daman and Diu is a federally ruled territory that comes directly under the administrative control of the BJP-led government in New Delhi.
Territory’s administrator Patel neither confirmed nor denied the move to demolish the chapel to expand the football field.
“No, I have no idea, you ask the local authorities,” he told.
But local Catholics said the administration was firm about the demolition plan.

Evangelical church torched in Madhya Pradesh

Unidentified persons have set fire to a Protestant church in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Police have launched a probe against those behind the burning of the Evangelical Lutheran church under Kesla police station in Narmadapuram district.
People came to know about the incident only on February 12 morning when they went the church for their Sunday service.
“I do not know when it happened, but we came to know it on Sunday morning,” Church pastor Mahesh Kumre told on February 13.
According to him, the vandals entered the church through the grill after breaking it open.
They burnt everything inside the six-year-old church including a copy of the Bible, prayer books, fans and chairs among others.
Since none stayed in the church the vandals had sufficient time to destroy everything in-side the church, the pastor said.

Indian states asked to report on Christian persecution

India’s top court has directed seven state governments to present details of the action taken by their law enforcement agencies in cases of alleged attacks against Christians and their institutions.
A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud on Feb. 6 ordered the state of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh to present the information within three weeks.
The order came while hearing a public interest petition (PIL) filed by Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore along with the National Solidarity Forum and the Evangelical Fellowship of India.
The Supreme Court at an earlier hearing on Sept. 1 last year had directed the federal home ministry to obtain reports from eight states to enable it to assess the claims of the Christian petitioners on the alleged violent incidents against their community members and institutions.
The eights states were to provide information on the incidents of “criminal wrongdoings” that occurred in 2021, as alleged in the petitions, verifying the registration of cases by police on receiving information about the crime, the status of investigations, the arrests made, and charges filed in court for prosecuting the culprits.
The Supreme Court said the verification exercise was needed to determine whether directions issued by it in a number of earlier judgments were being followed by the provincial authorities. The judgments made the states accountable for preventing violence and taking action against perpetrators of sectarian violence, especially the lynchings of minorities.