A court in Kerala on July 13 created history by issuing non-bailable arrest warrant against a Catholic bishop, who failed several times to appear for trial in a rape case.
The Additional District and Sessions Judge in Kottayam on July 1 had asked Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar to be present in the court to stand trial for allegedly raping a Catholic nun multiple times.
A Kashmiri couple is in the process of buying a 97-year-old vacant church in America that they want to convert into a museum and library of art, culture and history of Kashmir.
Khurshid Guru, a robotic surgeon and his wife, Lubna Guru are buying the church at 650 Park Place in Niagara Falls.
“The couple will convert the place into museum of Kashmir art, culture and history which will have over 1,500 paintings, books and artifacts of Kashmir collected over the years by the couple,” sources close to the family said.
Guru belongs to Sopore town in Baramulla district of Kashmir, and he is the son of noted Kashmiri cardio-thoracic surgeon, late Dr Abdul Ahad Guru.
Dr Abdul Ahad Guru died in mysterious circumstances in Srinagar city on April 1, 1993. He was believed to be close to the separatist Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).
Sources said the couple is also buying two additional houses to provide residential space to visiting Kashmiri arti-sts, scholars and contributors.
Sources also said the colle-ction being displayed would be worth over US$2 million.
Two Indian prelates are among the new members Pope Francis appointed on July 8 to the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.
They are Archbishop Felix Anthony Machado, the secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, and Bishop Raphy Manjaly of Allahabad.
They will join Cardinals Luis Antonio Tagle, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples; and Michael Czerny, the Jesuit under-secretary of the Migrants and Refugees Section of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Vatican News reports.
The council is the Church’s central office for promoting interreligious dialogue in accordance with the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, in particular the declaration Nostra aetate (In our time), the declaration on the Church’s relation with other religions.
It is responsible for promo-ting mutual understanding, respect, and collaboration bet-ween Catholics and followers of other religious traditions; encouraging the study of religions; and promoting the formation of persons dedicated to dialogue.
A group of health workers from Tellicherry archdiocese in Kerala has won praises for their dedicated services among coronavirus victims in a Maharashtra district.
“The district collector and other officers are highly impressed with their work,” says Father Tomy Kariyilakulam, director Bel Air Hospital, a Red Cross Society of India institution managed by the church at Panchgani in Satara district of Maharashtra.
The member of Missionary Congregation of Blessed Sacrament told Matters India on July 9 that 36 nurses have come on deputation from Kerala to work in various government hospitals in the district.
The 54-year-old priest, popularly known as Father Tomy, said the Bel Air hospital trained the Kerala nurses’ team in Covid care before deputing them to various hospitals.
District Collector Shekhar Singh had visited the priest’s hospital that has set apart 75 of their 200 beds for Covid patients.
As the number of coronavirus infections surge across the country, minority religious institutions, staying true to their values of humanism, have shown the way by offering their premises to be converted to quarantine centres or hospitals to strengthen the fight against the pandemic.
In Mumbai, Pawan Dham and Paras Dham Jain derasars (temples) had been converted into hospitals, the Makkah Masjid had been turned into an oxygen centre and the St Michael’s church had been turned into an isolation facility, Mumbai Mirror reported. These institutions, open to people of all faiths, these institutions have paved the way in showing that religion and caste do not matter in the fight against the pandemic.
The two Jain derasars in Kandivali and Ghatkopar respectively were converted into Covid-19 hospitals without ICU facilities, after their religious head Namramuni Jain Maharaj urged people to give back to the society, said Mumbai Mirror. Pawan Dham is a 75-bed facility that has already treated 230 patients from different communities.
Catholic lay leaders in India have accused church officials of ignoring papal instructions to deal with sex abuse by trying to shield a bishop facing allegations of murder, womanizing and corruption.
Lay leaders Chhotebhai and Melwyn Fernandes urged the papal nuncio to India, Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, to take action against Bishop Kannikadass Antony William of Mysore in Karnataka State.
Chhotebhai is the convener of the Indian Catholic Forum and adviser to Catholic Church Re-form International, while Fernandes is general secretary of the Association of Concerned Catholics, a forum of laypeople in India.
Some 37 priests sought Bi-shop William’s removal from office a year ago. The priests accused him of financial corru-ption, fathering children and having sexual relations with several women.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai has explained the confusion that resulted in some laypeople leading funeral rites and accusing their parish priests of not attending the last ceremonies of Covid-19 victims.
The cardinal’s statement came after the media published reports about lay Catholics leading funeral prayers and blessing graves to bury their family members. The reports also accused priests of refusing to bury Covid-19 victims for fear of contracting the virus.
“The archdiocese wishes to make clear that from the very beginning of the lockdown” on March 25, the clergy have been “responding to funeral requests with care and compassion,” the cardinal said in a June 26 statement.
He said the archdiocese had asked parishes not to have public requiem Masses. It also asked for bodies to be taken directly to the burial ground “where all the funeral prayers can be said before the burial.”
Directions also advised limiting the number of mourners to the minimum and keeping police informed of the funeral. In a video message, Cardinal Gracias also asked his priests not to visit houses because of the lockdown rules. “There was no direction to the priests to keep away from funerals,” Fr Nigel Barrett, spokesperson of Cardinal Gracias, told UCA News on June 28.
There must have been “rare incidents of some priests failing to arrive at a cemetery” but “most of our priests attend funerals with sensitivity and compassion,” he said.
Vietnam has jailed an out-spoken Catholic blogger, known for commenting on social issues, for allegedly trying to undermine the state.
The People’s Court in Lam Dong province on July 7 senten-ced Nguyen Quoc Duc Vuong, 29, to eight years in jail and three years’ probation for “mak-ing, hoarding and disseminating anti-state propaganda.”
The blogger from Don Duong district was arrested in September last year.
According to a four-page indictment, Vuong had posted and spread 98 video clips and 366 articles against the govern-ment on Facebook.
He was also accused of taking part in illegal protests in Ho Chi Minh City in 2018 against the approval of the country’s contro-versial cyber security law and proposed special economic deve-lopment plans. The indict-ment said his posts criticized the country’s socialist system and Ho Chi Minh, the father of commu-nism in Vietnam. It said Vuong was heavily influenced by his anti-communist father, who was a soldier in the South Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.
Catholics in Indonesia have welcomed the appointment of Cardinal Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo of Jakarta as a new member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Many of them stressed the need for him to promote tolerance in the multi-religious country. Cardinal Suharyo, also the chairman of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference and an ordinary of the Military Ordinariate of Indonesia, was among more than 20 new Pontifical Council members announced by the Vatican on July 8.
Church-goers in South Korea, where religious services are typically characterized by large in-person gatherings, are growing increasingly dissatisfied with online worship, an inevitable reality at times given the government’s social distancing directives and the protracted coronavirus pandemic.
According to a survey conducted by a publication operated by a Protestant denomination, more respondents said online worship proved unsatisfactory, with the vast majority saying that they were more easily distracted during online services.
Those who disapproved of online worship accounted for 41 percent of the respondents in the survey, while around one quarter (24.2 percent) said they were in favour of online church services. The survey, titled “Social Perception and Sense of Religious Belief,” was conducted by KEHC News in comme-moration of the 30th anniversary of its founding. The publication is run by the Korea Evangelical Holiness Church, one of the major Protestant denominations in the country.
Among the dissatisfied respondents, more than 70 percent said they had some difficulty concentrating during services held online, while the inability to feel engaged and the vitality of church services — usually felt during on-site worship – ranked second when it came to causes of discontent with online worship.
