Thousands of Indian Christians have distanced themselves from their leaders who attended a Christmas lunch hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, criticizing their silence over the ongoing anti-Christian violence in the country.
Over 3,000 Christians signed an online signature campaign, saying the Christian leaders, including Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai and several bishops from various Christian denominations, did not represent them at the gathering at Modi’s official residence.
The two-day virtual campaign, “Not in our name,” was started on Jan. 1 by Jesuit Fathers Cedric Prakash and Prakash Louis, and lay Catholic leader John Dayal.
Christian leaders say in 2023 India recorded some 650 cases of violence against Christians. Since Modi came to power in 2014, violence against Muslims and Christians has increased, they argue.
Sporadic violence continues in the northeastern state of Manipur, where more than 200 tribal Christians died and over 50,000 people were displaced in the sectarian flare-up after it started in May 2023.
Rights groups blame pro-Hindu groups that support Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the violence against Christian and Muslim religious minorities.
Modi, who seeks a third consecutive term in this year’s parliamentary polls, has never condemned the atrocities against minorities nor has he visited strife-torn Manipur, where a Christian woman was gang-raped and paraded naked in July last year.
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Cardinal says Vatican doc on same-sex blessings a ‘natural’ for India
India’s most senior Catholic cardinal and a close advisor to Pope Francis has said the Fiducia Supplicans, a controversial new Vatican text approving non-liturgical blessings for same-sex unions, is a “natural” for his country, calling it “an affirmation of our spirituality and a gift.”
Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai told Crux that in Indian culture, asking for and giving blessings is a widely accepted custom.
“I once met the Prime Minister, and he asked for prayers. I assured him of our prayers and our blessings,” Gracias said.
“Our Indian mentality is so inclusive, understanding people of other religions and other faiths,” Gracias said. “All are searching for God, all are searching for the truth, all are searching for spirituality.”
To the extent there’s controversy over Fiducia Supplicans in India, Gracias said, it’s because it’s been misunderstood.
“There is no change at all in the Church doctrine of a marriage between a man and a woman. The tradition of the Church, the magisterium is very clear and there is no contradiction at all,” he said.
“The blessing is like when a person is going on a journey, when they have come on a pilgrimage, they want a blessing asking God to be with them,” Gracias said. “Everybody has a right to God’s love and God’s compassion, calling the teaching on blessings in the document a “natural consequence” of this principle.
Gracias also said that Fiducia Supplicans is consistent with his own pastoral practice with the LGBTQ+ community.
“In the past I have said this and I want to say it again, they are part of our family, they need our pastoral care. I have met them when they have come to me sometimes privately in my office.”
“Jesus never refused a blessing … that’s the idea,” he said.
As a concrete example, in October 2018 the late Indian fashion designer Wendell Rodricks met Gracias. Rodricks also headed a group called the “Global Network of Rainbow Catholics,” which worked on the pastoral care of LGBTQ+ Catholics. The purpose of the meeting was for Rodricks to ask Gracias’s blessing on a plan to open a hotline for the LGBTQ+ community, in part to being them closer to the Church.
In a social media post after the meeting, Rodricks described his deep emotion when Gracias responded positively.
Arrested dissident Chinese bishop remains untraced
The whereabouts of a Chinese Catholic bishop remain unknown six days after his alleged arrest by the Communist authorities, reports say.
Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou was arrested on Jan. 2, for allegedly opposing the meddling of the state officials in the affairs of the diocese in Zhejiang province of eastern China, the Pillar reported referring to Asia News.
The 61-year-old bishop was ordained in 2011 with the Vatican mandate.
However, he has been arrested several times and detained for months, effectively barring him from performing the role of a bishop as he is not recognized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), which controls the “official church.”
Despite the 2018 Vatican-China agreement on bishop appointments based on mutual consent, Shao remains unrecognized by the CCP due to his constant refusal to join the CCPA, reports say.
The prelate is routinely arrested during major Christian feasts such as Easter and Christmas, which bar him from celebrating Mass with large congregations.
Colombo: anti-drug operation leaves hundreds of children without parents
A recent anti-drug operation called “Yukthiya” (which means “justice”) is leaving hundreds of children without parents due to indiscriminate arrests.
According to Patali Champika Ranawaka, former Energy Minister and leader of the United Republican Front (URF), the police have arrested a large number of drug addicts, sometimes both parents, especially in Colombo and the suburbs. In many cases, children go hungry while their parents are in detention.
According to two Mattakkuliya residents, Kamalini Sinnarasa and Vadivel Pathmarajah, more than 100 children aged between 2 and 10 were fed for days by social service organizations and often very poor neighbours.
In some areas of Colombo, most children whose parents were taken away by the police were unable to get even one meal a day. Some children between the ages of 4 and 10 started begging along the road with their little brothers.
Furthermore, most of those arrested are unable to pay their legal fees. Although the operation has already entered its third week, no key figures involved in drug trafficking have yet been arrested. While the police justify the operation, for several critics it is a farce.
The police are accused of using excessively heavy-handed tactics, including mass arrests, and of showing “little respect for people’s privacy and dignity”. Questions also arose about the low quantity of drugs recovered during the operation.
So far, 26,476 suspects have been arrested and according to the latest data, 54,090 raids have been conducted across Sri Lanka as of January 5 with police hunting for a further 2,453 suspects. About 1,549 people were sent to rehabilitation centers.
South Korea passes bill banning dog meat trade
South Korea’s parliament on Jnuary 10 passed a bill banning breeding, slaughtering and selling dogs for their meat, a traditional practice that activists have called an embarrassment for the country.
Dog meat has long been a part of South Korean cuisine, and at one point up to a million dogs were killed for the trade every year, according to activists. But consumption has sharply declined recently as Koreans embrace pet ownership in droves.
Eating dog meat is a taboo among younger, urban South Koreans, and pressure on the government to outlaw the practice from animal rights activists has been mounting.
Official support for a ban has grown under President Yoon Suk Yeol, a self-professed animal lover who has adopted several stray dogs and cats with First Lady Kim Keon-hee — who is herself a vocal critic of dog meat consumption.
The bill, which was proposed by both the ruling and main opposition parties, was passed unopposed by a 208-0 vote, with two abstentions.
Card. Sako: a ‘crisis unit’ against the Iraqi Christian exodus and the division between Churches
Iraqi Christians “are fleeing” from their country and many of them belong to the “productive segment” or the “most educated” sectors of the population (also) due to the “divisions” between the Churches, so far unable to implement strong and unitary policies and initiatives to give them a future.
The j’accuse was launched by the Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Card. Louis Raphael Sako, in a long message to the faithful in Iraq and around the world published on the patriarchate website and sent to AsiaNews for information.
From the temporary seat of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the cardinal has withdrawn until the controversy linked to the presidential decree which is a source of conflict and further division is resolved, he renews the appeal for a common commitment and evokes the creation of a “crisis unit”.
In Iraq, observes the Chaldean primate, “there is no strategy, security or economic stability”, there is a lack of “sovereignty” and there is a “double” application of the concepts of democracy, freedom, constitution, law and citizenship by those who should be at the service of the country and its inhabitants.
In this way the institutions have been “weakened” and there has been a “decline” in morals and values, services, healthcare and education have worsened, as well as “widespread corruption” and “growing unemployment” combined to a returning illiteracy.
In this context, the Christian component, already on the margins, has become even more fragile and has been the subject of kidnappings, killings that began in 2003 with the US invasion and culminated in the years of domination of the Islamic State (ISIS), with the great escape from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain.
China bars Tibetan kids from private classes, religious activities
Ethnic Tibetans have expressed alarm over door-to-door inspection by China’s communist authorities to ensure children are not taking private classes and participating in religious activities during their winter break.
The authorities are conducting random inspections in “residential areas and commercial establishments” in Tibet and other Tibetan-populated regions, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Jan. 9 citing unnamed sources.
“In addition to random door-to-door investigations, local authorities are also carrying out surveys of the Tibetan children,” a source in China’s south-western Qinghai province told RFA. The surveys were aimed “to find out what subjects are being taught to them in their out-of-school courses and where,” the source added.
In a notice issued on Nov. 30, 2023, the Lhasa city Education Department, while announcing the winter break from Dec. 30, 2023, until Feb. 27-29, 2024, had outlined the kind of education parents could give their children.
The notice also highlighted the work that teachers would need to do during the holiday period.
Parents were urged to not engage in the religious education of school children, and they were to “make sure the children are completely free from the influence of religion,” the notice said.
Tibetan children could participate in supplementary classes and workshops taught only by government-authorized individuals and organizations and on subjects approved by the authorities, the notice added.
The notice also emphasized the continued ban on Tibetan children’s participation in religious activities.
Earlier this month, the Chinese Education Department issued a notice reiterating a 2021 ban prohibiting Tibetan children from taking informal Tibetan language classes or workshops during their winter holidays.
The notice also ordered local authorities to intensify their supervision and investigation of supplementary lessons for Tibetan children and to carry out strict disciplinary action against those violating the rule, prompting inspections.
Conservative Cardinal Burke says he is ‘still alive’ after rare pope meeting
Conservative American Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of Pope Francis’ fiercest critics, had his first private audience with the pontiff in seven years on December 29, a month after the pope said he was stripping him of some of his Vatican privileges.
Asked by Reuters outside his residence in Rome if the meeting had gone well, Burke responded: “Well, I’m still alive”.
The 75-year-old cardinal declined to further discuss the content of what was, according to Vatican records, his first private audience with Francis since Nov. 10, 2016.
Wearing a floor-length black overcoat and black hat and with rosary beads in his left hand, he walked away on a street near the Vatican.
The Vatican listed the meeting on the pope’s official schedule but, as is customary, did not say what was discussed.
Last month, Francis told Vatican officials at a regular meeting of department heads that he had decided to strip Burke of some of his Vatican privileges, including a rent-subsidised apartment, according to a person who was in the room at the time.
The official quoted the pope as saying that Burke was “working against the Church and against the papacy” and that he had sown “disunity” in the Church.
When asked on Friday, Burke also declined to discuss the apartment.
Burke is a hero to traditionalists in the Church, particularly in the U.S., where he often has been a guest on conservative Catholic media outlets that have made criticism of the pope a mainstay of their operations.
Christmas Massacres Challenge Secular Explanations of Nigeria Conflict
Attacks on 26 villages in Plateau State began December 23, led by suspected extremists among Fulani Muslim herdsman against Christian farming communities. Some media reports cite nearly 200 dead, with many missing as local residents fled from gunmen into the bush.
Grace Godwin was preparing Christmas Eve dinner when her husband burst in with news from the neighboring village, ordering her and the children into the fields. Rebecca Maska similarly took cover but was shot and bled for three hours until help arrived, while her son had his hand chopped off with a machete before escaping. Magit Macham dragged his wounded brother to safety and hid overnight until the attackers moved on.
“These attacks have been recurring,” Macham told Reuters, having returned home from the regional capital of Jos to celebrate Christmas. “They want to drive us out of our ancestral land.”
For years, violence has plagued the West African nation’s Middle Belt, where a predominantly Muslim north intersects with a predominantly Christian south. Land rights issues are also contested, as seminomadic cattle herders press against settled agrarian hamlets in Africa’s most populous nation.
The Christmas massacres were the worst attacks since 2018. A local publication tallied an additional 201 deaths in Plateau State in the first half of 2023. Across the Middle Belt, at least 2,600 people were killed in 2021, according to the most recent data by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
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African bishop urges Catholics to report priests with secret wives
Bishop Gaspard Béby Gneba has called on the people of his diocese in western Ivory Coast to report priests who secretly have wives and families, as well as those who commit sexual or financial abuse.
“Any lay believer who knows that a priest is not faithful to his celibacy, has a wife or child, or has committed sexual abuse or economic crimes, must have the courage to report it to the bishop, otherwise, they commit a sin of complicity before God, the pope, and the Church,” Bishop Gneba said in an open letter to people of the Diocese of Man, which he read January 4 on diocesan radio.
“The pope speaks of zero tolerance for these priests,” said the 61-year-old bishop, a former seminary professor of spirituality and liturgy who has led the diocese since early 2008.
He said his message was “urgent, important, and necessary” and aimed at helping him in”the fight against sexual abuse, economic crimes within the clergy of Man, and the treatment of priests who have wives or children.”
After extensively reiterating these directives, he went on to discuss the “specific measures taken to transparently handle cases of sexual abuse or economic crimes committed by priests” in the diocese during his nearly 16 years at the helm.
“They must come to see me as soon as possible to submit their resignation,” he insisted, while deploring the behavior of some who “give the impression that priestly celibacy has been abolished or that continence is optional.”