A Catholic priest in the Indian state of Goa was granted “anticipatory bail” Aug. 8 after police registered a criminal case against him for allegedly “hurting Hindu sentiments” in remarks he made about a Hindu king during a Sunday Mass in July.
Hindu groups had staged demonstrations in front of the police station calling for criminal charges to be brought against Father Bolmax Pereira, parish priest of St. Francis Xavier Church in Chicalim in the Archdiocese of Goa.
Pereira was quoted in the Mass posted on YouTube saying that 17th-century Hindu king Chatrapati Shivaji “was a national hero but not a god.”
“There are a few people for whom Shivaji has become a god … Yes, he is a national hero. We have to honor and respect him. What he has done, the battles he fought to protect his people … for all that he deserves respect. He is a hero, but not a god. … We have to have a dialogue with our Hindu brethren and ask them ‘Is Shivaji your God? Or a national hero?’ If he is a national hero, let it be at that. Don’t make him a god. We need to understand their perspective. If we live in fear, we will not be able to rise again,” the Indian Express quoted Pereira’s homily Aug. 5 after police filed a criminal case against him.
Hindu nationalist groups had shared the Catholic priest’s remarks on social media and carried out demonstrations demanding his arrest for offending their “religious sentiments.”
The police submitted in the trial court on Aug. 8 that “Father Bolmax Pereira is not required in custody in connection with the [case] registered against him in the Shivaji Maharaj [great king] row.”
Following this police response, the court accepted the priest’s plea for “anticipatory bail” in the case against him. As many as four cases related to the same incident have been registered against Pereira in four different police stations in Goa.
Goa, the tiny former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India, was evangelized by St. Francis Xavier, whose mortal remains are preserved in the Bom Jesus Cathedral. The number of Christians — most of whom are Catholic — has been steadily declining and now comprise a quarter of the state’s 1.6 million population. The state has been ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for more than a decade.
“Anticipatory bail” in the Indian legal system allows the accused to be released from police custody even if arrested for an alleged crime. In Pereira’s case, the court ruled that in the event he is arrested for the crime, he is to be released on a bond of 20,000 rupees ($240) and a surety.

A Protestant pastor in a northern Indian state has been attacked for allegedly conducting religious conversions.
Pastor Shyju Joseph was conducting Sunday worship on Aug. 6 at his place in Bihar state’s Nawada district. Members of the Bajrang Dal (brigade of Lord Hanuman), a Hindu nationalist organisation, disrupted the service after accusing him of converting people to Christianity.
“They asked him to accompany them and made him sit on a motorcycle. Later, he was beaten up badly,” Christian activist Minakshi Singh told UCA News on Aug. 7.
Singh, general secretary of Unity in Compassion, a charity based in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state, said, “As of now, no complaint has been filed.”
We have contacted our people in Bihar to help the victim register a police complaint, Singh added.
Police took him to Sharif Sadar Hospital in Nawada district where he was undergoing treatment for his injuries, she added.
“Pastor Joseph’s condition is serious but he is stable now,” the Christian lay leader said.
A member of Persecution Relief, an inter-denominational organization in India, criticized the state government for not filing a case against the pastor’s attackers.
“Are the attackers above the law of the land?” the member, who did not want to be named, said.
He said he has urged the state government to take tough action against the attackers.

The return of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to the Indian Parliament 135 days after his disqualification has reassured people’s faith in the Indian judiciary, say some Christian intellectuals.
Gandhi, who represented Kerala’s Wayanad constituency in the Lok Sabha, was reinstated August 7 after the Supreme Court stayed his conviction in a criminal defamation case.
Gandhi was disqualified as a Lok Sabha member on March 24, a day after a Gujarat court convicted him and sentenced him to two years in jail.
A punishment of two years or more automatically disqualifies a lawmaker.
While Jesuit social scientist Father Cedric Prakash says Gandhi’s reinstatement “is a step in the right direction,” his confrere Father Stanislaus Alla, a moral theology professor in Delhi, says the apex court’s action reassures that the Indian judiciary is willing to uphold the laws instead of succumbing to pressures.
Father Alla says people become sad, frustrated and angry when they see justice denied, helping falsehood to prevail.
“However, our sacred books, including the Bible and the Upanishads declare that ‘Truth’ alone should prevail and not falsehood,” he explains.
Father Cedric says Gandhi’s conviction by various courts in Gujarat, his expulsion from parliament and subsequent stay by the Supreme Court “throw up many important lessons which could have an important bearing on the future of democracy in India.”

Catholics, including priests, in an archdiocese in southern India say they will not cooperate with a Pontifical Delegate who arrived to help find a solution to the decades-old liturgy dispute in their eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church.
A five-member delegation of some 400 priests in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese on Aug. 8 met Pontifical Delegate Archbishop Cyril Vasil of Slovakia to communicate their decision.
“We have informed our difficulty to engage with him any further,” said Father Jose Edassery, who was among the five-member delegation.
The prelate, a former secretary of the Office for Eastern Churches and head of the Greek Catholic diocese of Kosice in Slovakia, arrived on Aug. 4 at the Church’s base in southern Kerala state.
Vasil in an Aug. 5 pastoral exhortation asked Catholics in the archdiocese to pray for the success of his mission. It said the pope appointed him to implement the “synodal decision on the uniform mode of celebration.”
A memorandum the priests handed over to Vasil, a copy of which was made available to UCA News, said they cannot cooperate with him for such a mission.
“We hereby reiterate our loyalty to the Holy Father Pope Francis. But, we have reservations to put into practice the exhortation regarding the uniform mode of celebration of Mass,” the memorandum stated.
The priests and laity in the archdiocese have rejected the order of the Mass approved by the Church’s synod, saying they cannot agree to its archaic demands to turn to the altar during Eucharistic prayer. They want to continue to celebrate Mass facing the people throughout, as they have been doing for the past five decades.
The memorandum said the Jesuit archbishop is adamant about implementing synod approved mode of Mass in the archdiocese without having any dialogue with those opposing it.
“You have categorically stated that there is no room for dialogue and that you have no mandate to report our requests and concerns to the Holy Father. It is felt that your language and approach are at times of threatening rather than of dialogue,” the priests said in the memorandum.
“By doing so, we feel that your mission has become ineffective even before it took off.”