More than 6,700 Catholic nuns are among those helping over a million people taking shelter in relief camps after unprecedented floods ravaged Kerala, a south-western Indian state. “This is the biggest rescue and relief operation the Catholic Church in Kerala has under-taken in its history,” says Fr George Vettikattil, who heads the church’s relief operations in the state.

The church deployed its personnel and opened its institutions across Kerala to help people after rains and massive floods devastated 13 of Kerala’s 14 districts from Aug. 15 through Aug. 20. The rain has stopped in many places and water is now receding.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Aug. 24 told the media that the rains and floods have claimed 417 lives. At least 36 people are still missing. The floods initially displaced nearly 1.3 million people. About 869,000 people were still sheltered in 2,787 relief centres in the state, Vijayan said.

The initial estimated loss was around 200 billion rupees ($2.85 billion).

Vettikattil says all 32 Catholic dioceses in Kerala have joined relief works. As many as 69,821 young people and 99,705 lay volunteers joined 6,737 nuns, 2,891 priests and 354 seminarians to rescue stranded people with the help of government agencies and individually, the priest told Global Sisters Report.

The state also has 2,178 religious priests and 447 brothers who have also joined in helping the flood affected.

“We have formed separate groups comprising priests, nuns and brothers to clean the mud from houses of people living in relief camps,” Sister Modesta, who is a member of the Congregation of Teresian Carmelites, told GSR. “They leave in the morning and work until evening,” she added.

Fishermen in India’s Kerala State are being hailed as heroes for using their traditional wooden boats to rescue men, women and children from swirling flood-waters. “You are like our God,” a woman with folded hands told fishermen who saved her along with another female villager and 30 youngsters trapped in a children’s home in Alappuzha district, an area laced with waterways.

The fishermen, mostly Catholics and Muslims on the Arabian Sea coast, formed their own voluntary rescue service during flash flooding from Aug. 15-18.

While some people were just temporarily isolated by deluges, the lives of others were in serious peril as rising floodwaters submerged homes.

A team led by Raju Thomas from Trivandrum Archdiocese, some 200 kilometers away, carried their boats on lorries to the disaster area in central Kerala.

“We could not see the children’s home,” he said. “We found them after we heard the children screaming.”

Christians in India are marking the 10th anniversary of the brutal violence that Christians of eastern India’s Odisha State faced in 2008, with a Mass in the state capital , Bhubaneswar, on August 25.

Archbishop John Barwa together with the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) are celebrating the 10th anniversary Mass at St Joseph Convent School of Bhubaneswar on the theme, “Reconciliation, Thanksgiving and Grace.”

The anniversary day is dubbed as Kandhamal Day, as most of the violence was perpetrated in the State’s Kandhamal District that comes under the jurisdiction of Cuttack Bhubaneshwar Archdiocese.

However, Arch. Barwa said that many will not be able to come for the Mass in Bhubaneswar on August 25 because of the distance and the current rainy season. But the day will be marked locally at various different levels.

The archbishop told Vatican News that 3 days after the 10th anniversary, Christians are organizing a demonstration to press for their demands.

On August 28 Christians plan to hold a public rally in Phulbani during which they intend to hand a memorandum to the state chief minister Naveen Patnaik, to demand justice and compensation that many victims and their families have been waiting for 10 years now.

But more than all these external manifestations, the archbishop said, Christians are relying on prayers.

It was under late Archbishop Raphael Cheenath that the August 2008 anti-Christian violence flared up in Kandhamal. Archbishop Barwa who took over in February 2011 noted that in the past 10 years the life of the Church in Odisha and Kandhamal has grown and enriched enormously.