Drawing inspiration from Pope Francis’ initia-tive and in response to the Gospel command of follo-wing Jesus in servant lea-dership, the Kerala unit of the Indian Christian Wo-men’s Movement (ICWM) – an autonomous collective of women from different churches – has conducted foot-washing ritual in public spaces since 2017. On March 27, this ritual was celebrated at Snehakkoodu (nest of love), an inter-religious center for very marginalized elderly women and men in Kottayam, Kerala. For us the representatives of ICWM Kerala who washed and kissed the feet of the women residents of Snehakkoodu, it was a liberative experi-ence of witnessing equality as testified in the Gospels. In the foot washing as modeled by Jesus, we see a revolutionary symbol that can help overthrow the oppressive hierarchies that persist in our societies, particularly in the name of class, caste, gender, and religion.
In addition, foot-washing in a public space like Snehakkoodu facilitates going beyond mere inclusion of wo-men in this ritual to representing Jesus who took a bold stand against power structures that are repressive and discrimina-tory. Like Jesus who subverted the established social hierar-chies of his time and overturned the tyrannical structures of power, we are led to do likewise for realizing the kinship politics of the Gospels.
We see that to realize the liberative significance of foot-washing as modeled by Jesus, it is crucial that we go beyond commemorating it as a mere Maundy Thursday ritual in the Church.
Only by becoming inclusive, egalitarian, and subversive like Jesus can we respond to the challenge posed by the question “Do you know what I have done? (Jn 13: 12).

Unidentified miscreants looted a Divine Word mission in Odisha, eastern India, after attacking four priests, teachers and workers living in the campus. The April 10 incident took place at the mission at Bagdehi, more than 20 km northeast of Jharsuguda, the headquarters of the Divine Word congregation’s India East province.
The police have launched a probe into the incident. “Some 11 looters entered the campus of St Arnold primary school at around 9.30 night,” Father Anuranjan Bilung, the provincial, told Matters India on April 12. He said they first entered the teachers’ quarters where eight women teachers resided. The miscreants forcefully took their gold chains, earrings and mo-bile phones at gunpoint. “The teachers were silen-ced and forced to shift to one room and the intruders locked the room from outside. They also destroyed their mobiles and asked them to remain silent or get killed,” the priest narrated.
At gunpoint, they asked a woman worker to take them to the nearby priests’ residence. They threatened to kill the woman’s little daughter who was with her. The frightened woman showed them the priests’ place from outside.  The miscreants first broke open the grill of the presbytery where four priests lived.
Father Christopher John, who was still awake, seeing the grill open, went out to check. The intruders, who were hiding, assaulted him and destroyed his mobile phone. “The looters after entering their residence thrashed the priests with curtain rods and chairs, tied their hands and legs and locked them in a room,” the provincial said. They also destroyed their mobiles and one laptop and searched the rooms and looted money amounting less than 100,000 rupees.
A message the provincial sent to confreres and friends said the attackers left the mission around 1 am on April 11 carrying cash and valuables. The assaulted priests managed to untie one of them, who called the police with a phone that had escaped miscreants’ attention. He also called a worker, who lived close to the mission. The worker opened the priests’ room and the priests then opened the room of the teachers and workers.
The priests went to a dispensary managed by the Handmaids of Mary nuns for first aid. The police, who came at 1:45 am, took the priests in an ambulance to the District Hospital in Jharsuguda. On being informed, some priests from the Provincial’s House rushed to the hospital. They took the four confreres back to the mission after initial treatment. The provincial house later contacted the Jharsuguda District Police Head Office and the local police stations at Bagdehi and Laikera for action. At around 6:30 am, another police team reached the mission and started to investigate. After gathering information from the workers, the teachers, and the priests, the police filed a First Information Report. The priests and the teachers “are still under trauma,” the provincial said.

A Catholic church in Kerala was recently transformed into a makeshift hospital to help elderly and bedridden people participate in religious ser-vices during the Lent. The St Joseph’ Church parish in North Chalakudy under the Irinjala-kuda diocese on March 15 brought to the church some 90 elderly people to honor and recognize them. They included 15 bedridden and three on wheelchairs.

The Sanjopuram St Joseph’s Chu-rch under the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese in Kerala on April 10 showed a documentary on the Mani-pur violence to students attending its vacation catechism classes. The documentary “Cry of the Oppressed” on the violence in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur was screened for around 125 students.

Catholics in Goa say Pope has given them an “approa-chable pastor” who is “an epitome of faithful servant” as their new auxiliary bishop. The Pope on April 6 appointed Father Simião Purificação Fernandes, who is the current director of the Pastoral Insti-tute of St Pius X at Old Goa, as the auxiliary bishop of Goa and Daman. Cardinal Filippe Neri Ferrao, arch-bishop of Goa and Daman, said the clergy, religious and the laity “ext-end our warmest felicitations” to the bishop-elect. The cardinal prayed for God’s grace to accompany his auxili-ary “in all his endeavours, granting him wisdom, courage and compa-ssion.”

Apostolic Nuncio Abp Leopoldo Girelli on March 26 joined prelates from the Latin and Syro-Malabar Churches to celebrate Chrism Mass at New Delhi’s Sacred Heart Cathe-dral. Abp Anil Couto was the main celebrant of the religious service that is held during the Holy Week. Besi-des the nuncio, he was joined by Abp Emeritus Vincent Concessao and Bp Deepak Tauro of Delhi Latin dio-cese and Abp Kuriakose Bharani-kulangara and Bp Jose Puthenveetil of Faridabad Syro-Malabar Church.

More than 25,000 Christians repre-senting various denominations gathered at Udalguri town in Assam on March 14 to pray for peace and harmony in the nation. The meeting took place in the backdrop of the northeastern Indian state passing the controversial Assam Healing (Prevention of Evil) Practices Bill, 2024, and attacks on Christian institutions by certain groups ahead of the 2024 General Elections. Udalguri District’s Christian Coordination Committee organized the gathering at the Udalguri Nalbari Play Ground, some 115 km northeast of Guwahati, Assam’s main city. The event aimed to unite people from diverse backgrounds under the common goal of fostering peace and harmony. The 90-minute prayer was attended among denominations Baptists, Catholics, and Church of North India members. The gathering comprised people from different ethnic, linguistic communities of Assam such as Boro, Adivasi (commonly known as Tea Tribes), Santhal, Garos, Rabhas, Nepalis, and the Assamese.
The organizers claimed the spontaneous participation reflected people’s concern and anxiety regarding the need for justice and equal treatment of all citizens in the matters of faith, culture and practices. Reverend Susil Daimari, secretary of the Church Growth Department at BBC, in his message, stressed the urgent need for peace and harmony in the nation. The participants collectively prayed, focusing primarily on justice, peace and harmony across the nation. The prayers reflected the collective desire for a more unified and peaceful society, the organizers said.

As many as 500 Catholic women in the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar celebrated the International Women’s Day by pledging to foster women’s empowerment and gender equality through education. The women came to the March 10 event from various Mass centers of the Saint Vincent Cathedral Parish in the Odisha capital. The program began with Mass celebrated by Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar. The Divine Word prelate, in his homily, commended the wo-men for attending the program in significant numbers and said that if all women could embrace dignity, self-respect, and equa-lity in their daily lives, there would be no need to observe Women’s Day on a specific date.
The archbishop wanted the empowerment of all women within his archdiocese, encou-raging their active participation across all aspects of the Church and society. The event took place at Maa Velankini Mass Center in the Salia Sahi Slum of Bhubaneswar, which was set up as a temporary facility to accommodate the increasing number of Catholics, who came to the city following the 2008 anti-Christian violence in Kan-dhamal district. Sacred Heart’s Sister Sujata Jena, secretary to the Commission for Women of the Archdiocese, in her opening address said that the annual observation of women’s day would not make women equal. Only “conscious and regular” attempts by both men and women would help avoid people falling into the sin of patriarchy, she said and cited several in-stances where laws to prevent discrimination against women are being violated, despite the constitutional guarantee of equality.

Palm Sunday was celebrated with fervour among displaced Kukis in Manipur, the north-eastern Indian state that has been grappling with serious ethnic violence since last May.
In several places, churches were too small to contain everyone, forcing some worshippers to participate in the service outside. “Even in parishes where there are a large number of refugees – for example Don Bosco Parish in Churachandpur and St Mary’s Parish in Tuibong (Chura-chandpur), churches were packed for Psalm Sunday liturgi-cal services,” said Fr Varghese Velickakam, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Imphal and coordinator of the relief and rehabilitation committee. “The situation is slowly settling down,” Fr Velickakam told AsiaNews, as this day of celebration offered an important sign that things were getting back to normal.
“The refugees are already in the separate area,” the clergyman explained. “We are trying to rehabilitate them. Construction is going on. Support is coming from different parts of the country and from their own community.”

A Catholic bishop in Uttar Pradesh state on March 12 expressed relief after a court granted bail to a Catholic and 10 Protestants. “Finally, I am able to give you good news. The District Judge [in Barabanki] has granted bail to Father Dominic [Pinto] and all those who were arrested with him. Praise the Lord,” says a message from Bishop Gerald John Mathias of Lucknow.
The 11 were in judicial custody since February 6, a day after they were arrested for allegedly trying to convert poor Hindus in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Bishop Mathias thanked all those who prayed and made sacrifices for the bail. “So many people including bishops, priests, sisters, lay faithful, and youth have been praying. God has finally heard our prayers,” he added.
Besides Father Pinto, the court granted bail to Anil, Surju Prasad Gautam, Pawan Kumar, Sunil Pasi, Ghanshyam Gautam, Surendra Paswan, Rahul Paswan, Ramcharan Rawat, Dharmendra Kori and Suraj Gautham. On February 5, the police in Barabanki district arrested Father Pinto, 41, and others after some Hindu hardliners complained that they had conducted a mass religious conversion gathering at Navintha, the pastoral center of the Lucknow diocese. The following day, the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Barabanki, some 90 km northwest of Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state, remanded them in judicial custody.
Father Pinto, who was ordained a priest in in 2013, is the director of Navintha where some Protestant pastors and around 100 Khrist Bhakts (followers of Christ) attended their routine prayer meeting. The “Khrist Bhakts” are not converted to Christianity but follow the teachings of Christ. They were charged under the provisions of Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law and, if found guilty, they could be imprisoned for a maximum of 10 years.
Father Donald de Souza, chancellor and spokesperson of Lucknow diocese, dismissed the allegation of religious conversion and said Father Pinto had only given space to the Protestants to hold their program. Nobody was converted at the program or asked to become Christian, he explained. “Our people are arrested based on totally baseless charges,” Father de Souza told Matters India after the arrest. He pointed out that Father Pinto was not even attending the prayer gathering as it was a Protestant program. “Our priest only gave the building for their meeting.”
Persecution against Christians witnessed a sharp rise recently in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India. Father Pinto was among 39 Christians remanded in the first two months of this year in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law. Father Pinto’s bail application was postponed three times, the last being on March 1. The anti-conversion law stipulates that people should inform district authorities of their plan to change religion 30 days before the planned conversion ceremony. They also have to prove that he or she has not been forced or “lured” to change faith.