More than 10,000 people braved heavy rains to attend a ceremony to elevate Calicut diocese as a metropolitan arch-diocese and its bishop as its first metro-politan archbishop. Apostolic Nuncio to India and Nepal Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli led the May 25 ceremonies at St. Joseph’s Church, in Kozhikode (formerly Calicut). In his homily during the inaugural Mass, Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and president of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, stressed the deep spiritual signi-ficance of occasion. He commended the faith and leadership of the faithful of the newly erected archdiocese. The cardinal paid tribute to St. Francis Xavier, whose missionary zeal in the Malabar region laid the foundation for the Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Churches. He noted that Calicut’s new archdiocesan status stands as a testament to this enduring spiritual legacy, rooted in centuries of evangeliza-tion and community witness.

The top court in southern Indian Tamil Nadu state has ruled that persons marrying under the Christian personal law should be considered to have converted to Christianity and abandoned their eligibility for caste-based social benefits. The ruling came in a case seeking the court’s order to disqualify the “illegal” election victory of a lower caste woman to a local body seat that is reserved for lower caste people, officially referred to as Scheduled Castes. In October 2022, Prime Mini-ster Narendra Modi appointed a three-member panel to exa-mine the implications of exten-ding benefits to Christians of lower caste origin, following the court’s request for the go-vernment’s view on the issue. The hearing is halted again due to the panel’s failure to submit its report to the government. Out of India’s 1.4 billion people, 201 million belong to the Dalit community, and nearly 60 percent of India’s 25 million Christians trace their origin to Dalit and tribal communities.

A legal rights group on a fact-finding mission in a tribal district of India’s eastern Odi-sha state has found that aggre-ssive Hindu mobs are denying poor Christians from tribal and Dalit communities the “right to belief and a dignified burial.”
The Odisha Lawyers Forum, in a May 14 report titled: Free-dom to Be Buried, A New Stru-ggle for Christians in Odisha, has cited recent cases of “denial of the rights of the deceased” in Nabarangpur district, which they say are a clear violation of the Indian Constitution and laws. The report has docu-mented many such cases between 2022 and 2025, based on testimonies provided by survivors in the villages.
“The Odisha Lawyers Forum found gross violations of fundamental, constitutional and human rights of the most vulnerable communities of Adivasi, Dalit and religious minorities in terms of equality before law, right to freedom of expression, thought, belief and association, more importantly, the right to life and a dignified burial in Nabarangpur district in Odisha,” the report said.

Police in Uttar Pradesh in northern India have arrested four Christians after they were accused of violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law. “Our four faithful were arrested on May 12 after they were accused of attempting to convert gullible indigenous people with job offers and financial aid,” said a Church official providing legal help to the victims. They were arrested and taken to Chandan Chawki police station in Lakhimpur Kheri district in the state, which witnesses high levels of persecution against Christians, according to rights activists. The four were remanded in custody the following day. Efforts to secure their bail were still ongoing, according to the Church official, who did not wish to be named. This was the latest in a series of arrests of Christians for alleged violations of the anti-conversion law, which carries up to 20 years in jail. Christian leaders and rights activists say these laws are tools to persecute minorities by right-wing Hindu groups and have called on the Supreme Court to declare them unconstitutional.

Police in eastern Indian Odisha state have started probing an armed robbery at a Catholic seminary that left two Catholic priests assaulted and injured and valuables looted. A gang of nine suspected robbers barged into Carmel Niketan minor seminary in Charbati of Kuchinda in the state in the early hours of May 23, said Father Thomas Bose Velassery, the regional vicar of the Order of Discalced Carmelites. The seminary is managed by the religious order. He said during the attack, two priests – Silvin K. S., 40, and Linus George, 90 – who look after the seminary, were tied, assaulted, and their phones snatched. During the attack, the seminary was mostly deserted as students were away on summer holidays, he added. Odisha is also known for the persecution of Christians by Hindu hardliners. In 2008, Odisha’s Kandhamal district witnessed one of the worst anti-Christian violence that left at least 39 Christians killed and as many as 70,000 became homeless, according to official government reports. Other reports said the death toll was 100, and some 40 Christian women were sexually assaulted by a Hindu mob. At least 100 churches and between 5,000 and 6,000 houses were destroyed in the violence.

A project run by the Catholic Church in western India’s Goa state, which supports vulnerable youth and marginalized women in becoming self-reliant, has won the 2025 “Francis of Assisi and Carlo Acutis, for an Economy of Fraternity” international award. Project HOPE was conferred the award at the Church of St. Mary Major in Assisi, Italy, on May 25. The award includes a cash prize of 50,000 euros and a scarf featuring an image of St. Francis of Assisi removing his clothes as a symbol of renouncing the material world.
Father Sanford Rodrigues from the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman received the award on behalf of the project team. HOPE, which stands for Healing, Opportunities, Protection, and Empowerment, was born out of “Childline” — an initiative by Catholic charity Caritas Goa that sought to rescue and rehabilitate vulnerable children from the poor and neglected villages. The government took over the project in 2023, and subsequently, some volunteers launched a new project on a pilot basis, which evolved into HOPE.

A non-governmental organization based in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, has opened a sustainable livelihood center for transgender individuals. The Nee Thodu Society for Transgender Persons operates under the leadership of Sister Amitha Polimetla, its founder director. The member of the Salvatorian Sisters Congregation is committed to provi-ding skill training and employment opportunities. The center aims to enable transgender individuals to lead dignified lives and integrate into mainstream society. “Our goal with the Sustainable Livelihood Center is to dismantle the barriers that have historically excluded the transgender community,” stated Sister Polimetla, an advocate for skills-based empo-werment. “We believe that with the right skills and opportunities, every individual can lead a life of dignity and contribute meaningfully to so-ciety.” She emphasized the trans-formative vision of the center: “This center is more than just a skill train-ing facility; it’s a beacon of hope. It represents our commitment to creat-ing a future where transgender indi-viduals are not just tolerated, but truly integrated and empowered.” Currently, the center offers short-term courses in tailoring, jute bag making, and paper plate production.

Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar has blessed a church built at the site where a Protestant Christian was burnt alive during the 2008 anti-Christian violence. “The perpetrators of violence had planned to eliminate Christians from this region, but they have failed in front of our God’s mighty hand,” said the Divine Word prelate during homily at the opening of the Archangel Michael Catholic Church of Gudrikia, a substation under the Padangi parish. The prelate thanked God for giving them a new church, which he said was a house of His blessings, unity, love and fraternity. “Let us witness our deep faith in God through our daily life. May Archangel Michael intercede for us to encounter difficulties and threats to remain firm in our Christian faith,” Archbishop Barwa added. Fourteen priests and seven nuns were among more than 500 Catholics who attended the May 26 blessing ceremony