A newly professed nun, who was jailed along with four others for alleged con-version charges, were on June 13 granted bail by a court in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.
Sister Vibha Kerketta was arrested June 6 and jailed the next day along with her mother and three others after her family organized a Mass in their home to thank God for her profession in the Daughters of St Anne, a Ranchi-based congregation.
The family lived at Schoolpara lane of Balachhapar village in Jashpur district, Chhattisgarh.
A group of Hindu fundamentalists, who barged into the house, accused her mother and others for conducting a healing session and insulting other religions.
A magistrate sent the nun and the other four to jail and set the bail hearing for June 13. The Sessions Court of Jashpur accepted their bail application on furnishing 15,000 rupees by each of them, Jesuit Father Fulgence Lakra, a lawyer, told Matters India.
They were released in the evening and Sister Lily Grace Topno, superior general of the congregation, thanked God as well as the Church authorities and their well wishers for the good news.
Sister Kerketta had taken her first vows on December 8, 2022, and went home after six months. Her family organized the Mass to follow a local tradition to welcome a new priest or nun with a religious function. Some 60 people had attended Sister Kerketta’s function that started at 6 pm.
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North-Eastern India’s oldest church caught in factional feud
The oldest church in northeastern India has been entangled in a factional feud for more than eight months.
On June 4, the Christ Church in Guwahati, the commercial capital of Assam state, witnessed unruly scenes when one group shut the doors obstructing another group from the church building.
Video clips circulated on social media showed two women arguing with others while blocking them from the church.
Samuel Sangma, former secretary of the church and leader of a function, described the incident as “unprece-dented” and “most reprehensible.”
Catholic bishop airs community concerns in north India
A bishop in India’s national capital New Delhi has appealed for the safety and security of the Christian com-munity and its places of worship after two incidents of attacks on Catholic priests in the northern state of Haryana.
The June 5 letter referred to two separate incidents. On June 4, Father Joseph Amalraj was manhandled by a mob of 20-25 people after Sunday Mass at St. Joseph Vaz Catholic Mi-ssion Church in Kherki Daula village in Gurugram, formerly Gurgaon.
Cardinal Alencherry decries Christian persecution in Manipur
The special synod meeting of the Syro-Malabar Church began June 12 with Cardinal George Alencherry bemoaning the persecution of Christians in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur.
The synod is being held at the behest of the Vatican at Mount St. Thomas, the Syro-Malabar Church’s headquarters in Kakkanad, a Kochi suburb.
India’s northeast Catholics look to French missioners’ canonization
Bishop George Palliparambil of Miao diocese in Arunachal Pradesh is the postulator of the cause for the beatification of the Paris Mission Society missionaries Nicolas Michaël Krick and Augustin-Étienne Bourry, who are inseparable from the history of evangelization in the region, one of the most remote areas in north-eastern India.
The French missionaries were murdered in 1854 by local tribal people on the Chinese border. More than a century and a half later, the local Catholics claim their spiritual patronage to the missionaries and work for their beatification. Fathers Krick and Bourry were declared “servants of God” in 2010.
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The cause of sainthood started when the Diocesan Commission of Inquiry was opened in 2019 by the Diocese of Miao. Salesian Bishop Palliparambil, 69, followed the process as postulator of the cause for beatification of the missionaries. The bishop, who served this border region with China and Burma for over 40 years, tells about these two central figures for the local Church.
Stop targeting Church institutions, bishops urge governments
The Catholic bishops in India have urged the federal and Madhya Pradesh governments to stop “the age old bogey of conversion” to repeatedly tarnish “the dedicated services” of its people.
“The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) is deeply saddened at the recent happenings in the state of Madhya Pradesh and particularly in the Catholic diocese of Jabalpur,” says a press statement issued by conference secretary general Archbishop Felix Machado of Vasai.
The May 31 appeal came a day after Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur and Sister Ligy Joseph, in charge of an orphanage, filed for anticipatory bail against their possible arrest in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The two were named in a case under the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.
The CBCI statement pointed out that the diocese of Jabalpur has witnessed the state machinery targeting three of its institutions. The first was on March 2 when members of state Commission of Child Rights and the commission’s district head visited St Joseph Boys and Girls Boarding in Ghoreghat along with some police-men. The following day, the same team visited JDES Boys and Girls Boarding at Junwani and the third incident occurred on May 29 at Asha Kiran Child Care Institute, Jhinjhari, Katni.
“What is common in all the three incidents is that the officials entered the premises without prior permission, searched the premises, took away some files and questioned the children if they were forced to go to church and if they were forced to read the Bible,” the statement explains.
The bishops’ conference points out that although the three boarding and hostels “cooperate whole heartedly in complying with all legal and government requirements,” the teams that visited them sought to unnecessarily harass the management and the children.
“They tried to make false allegations against the management and show how the children are getting converted to Christianity,” the press statement says.
Disturbing national issues worry Catholic religious in northeast
A peace and solidarity pro-gram in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya has addressed pressing national issues while promoting unity, justice, and peace.
“From the targeted violence against Christians and tribals in Manipur to the relentless attacks on Church personnel and institutions and the disturbing normalization of hate speeches, our country is witnessing a wave of alarming events,” lamented Chri-stian Brother Sunil Britto, the main organizer of the program that was held June 10 at Nongpoh in the RiBhoi district of Meghalaya.
More than 300 people, including priests, brothers, nuns and lay people from Meghalaya and Assam attended the program organized by the RiBhoi unit of the Conference of Religious India (CRI). The program also included a silent rally, where participants displayed posters advocating peace, solidarity, and justice for all. The rally served as a powerful reminder of the urgent need for collective action and social change, Brother Britto said.
The event featured peace songs and dances by Nathalie Warjri, St. Stephen Convent Hostel girls, Claretian aspirants, and Salesian aspirants expressing the spirit of unity and harmony thro-ugh their performances.
Indian pastors, woman denied bail, continue in jail
A court in a central Indian state has rejected the bail applications of two protestant pastors and a woman arrested on charges of alleged religious conversion. The district court in Satna, Ma-dhya Pradesh state, rejected the bail applications of pastors Roshan Faster, Mayaram Ningwal, and Aarti Saket on June 6.The accused will remain in police cu-stody till June 17, a police official said.
“It is a difficult time for us. We are working with our legal team for the next course of act-ion,” Minakshi Singh, a Christian activist, told on June 7.
The pastors and the woman were arrested from Motwa village under the Majhgawan police station in Satna district on June 4.
The arrests came after a local man named Manoj Kori complained to the Hindu group, Bajrang Dal (Brigade of Hindu god Hanuman), about a Christian prayer meeting being held inside a house. Members of the Bajrang Dal, accompanied by the police, reached the house and took Faster, Ningwal, and Saket into their custody.
Ashish Jain, a sub-divisional police officer of Chitrakoot, said a case has been registered against them under various sections of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2021, which prohibits religious conversion through unlawful means.
Indian Catholic bishop, nun seek bail in ‘conversion’ case
A Catholic bishop and a nun named in a case under the stringent anti-conversion law have filed anticipatory bail applications against their possible arrest in a central Indian state.
Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur and Sister Liji Joseph, in charge of Asha Kiran (ray of hope) Children’s Care Institute, a home for destitute children filed bail applications before the district court on May 30 in Katni district in Madhya Pradesh.
Both were accused of violating the state’s anti-conversion law in a police complaint by Priyank Kanoongo, chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
Kanoongo has accused Bishop Almeida, chairman of the orphanage, and the nun of forcing three Hindu children in the orphanage to convert to Christianity.
“This is a blatant lie to target the orpha-nage,” Father Thankachan Jose, a diocesan priest helping out with the case, told UCA News on June 1.
“The orphanage,” Father Jose said, “has been engaged in building the lives of the abandoned or orphaned children on railway platforms since 2005.”
“Our purpose is not to convert anyone but to rebuild their shattered lives,” the priest said.
He challenged Kanoongo to prove the allegation with “one credible case” rather than “misusing his official position.”
Such false cases will harm “poor children who get a place to stay, food, clothes and facilities to study,” the priest said.
The hearing of the case against the bishop and the nun, slated for last week, was postponed after the investigation officer failed to submit the records of the case.
The court is likely to take up the case for hearing in a day or two, Jose added.
Japanese Protestant daughter introduces mother to Catholic Church
Kazuko Nabeshima was born 70 years ago in Nomozaki at the southern tip of the Nagasaki Peninsula, a town now part of Nagasaki City. But was “never religious” despite her peninsula housing many churches.
She left Nagasaki after graduating from school to take up a job and lived for more than 30 years without any contact with a church. The turning point came some six years ago when her only daughter Yumi, who lived nearby, decided to move with her family to Okinawa.
“I knew little about Okinawa…But even though I didn’t know anything or have any connections there, I was excited about moving and I thought Okinawa was a good place.”
And, Yumi welcomed Nabeshima’s “desire to be part of her family.”
After the move, Yumi unexpectedly became a Protestant Christian and quit her job as a medical nurse to involve herself in church activities on weekends and holidays.
“I felt isolated as I couldn’t talk to my daughter. I was worried if it was alright to be so obsessed with religion,” Nabeshima said.