Five Catholic nuns in Kerala, who hit the headlines with their fight against rape, have joined another campaign demanding justice for two minor girls who were allegedly raped and murdered.

The nuns of Missionaries of Jesus joined a public protest on Nov. 18 in Kerala’s commercial capital Kochi.

It was part of an ongoing campaign in the southern Indian state that started last month after a district court acquitted all four people accused in the case. The girls from a socially poor Dalit family, aged 13 and nine, were allegedly attacked in 2017 inside their one-room house when their mother was away at work.

“We attend the protest to share our solidarity with the grieving mother of the two minor girls,” said Sister Anupama Kelamangalathu-veli, who spoke for the other nuns. The protest of the five nuns in September 2018 demanded the arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, who was accused of raping their former superior. Their diocesan congregation functioned under the bishop’s patronage. The bishop was arrested and faces trial in court.

“We understand the pain of their mother, and we want justice for her even though her daughters would not come back to life,” the nun told ucanews on Nov. 19.

The first Asian Ecumenical Women’s Assembly (AEWA) opened on November 22 at Hsinchu, Taiwan, acknowledging the power of women as the major factor to determine the Church’s future direction.

“I see the reality of our global Christianity, especially in Asia, that the Churches have been transformed into ‘churches of women.’ The power of women is extra-ordinary in determining the future direction of Christianity,” asserted CCA Moderator Archbishop Willem T.P. Simarmata, who opened the assembly at the Presbyterian Bible College auditorium.

The assembly organized by the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) has the theme “Arise, Be Awake to Reconcile, Renew, and Restore the Creation.” More than 250 women from different denominations and Churches are attending the assembly.

In his welcome address, CCA general secretary Reverend Mathews George Chunakara said, “Improvements in the status of women are evident in different fields, and these transformations have been made possible by strengthened institutions and legal systems, demographic transitions, and a more dynamic civil society. However, we are on the trajectory towards a less inclusive and more unequal world.”

Chunakara said the assembly’s expected outcome is “not merely to address or talk about gender representation within Churches, but to reflect and strategize ways in which the Church and society can be further sensitized.”

He reminded the participants that their collective task to create conditions for identifying, motivating, building, and enabling a diverse range of women leaders to hone their talents and bear formidable challenges.

“To reconcile is to renew and restore relationships. AEWA offers the space to interpret the multiple meanings of the theme and apply them practically in our contemporary contexts,” Chunakara added.

The opening worship was led by participants from various Asian countries, together with members from the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, the host. Reverend Henriette Hutabarat Lebang, chairperson of the PGI (Persekutuan Gereja di Indonesia, Church Fellowship in Indonesia) and former CCA general secretary, delivered a homily based on the text Isaiah 32:9-20.

Suspecting foul play in the increasing baby-selling charges against Missionaries of Charity nuns, a Catholic bishop in eastern India has demanded a high-level probe into the role of a government agency.

Auxiliary Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas of Ranchi made the demand on Nov. 20, days after state police raided a convent in his Jharkhand State in connection with three cases of baby selling registered against the nuns.

He wants India’s top investi-gating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, to probe the role of the government’s Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in the cases.

“Police have been registering false cases against innocent nuns for helping beleaguered unwed mothers,” Bishop Mascarenhas told ucanews.

The November 18 raid on a Missionaries of Charity convent in Dumka town was “the latest in a series of calculated attacks on the nuns,” the bishop said.

The police, working under the state government of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), were “fabricating” the cases, he alleged.

Pope Francis on November 18 received Indian nun Sister Lucy Kurien, who has worked more than 20 years sheltering destitute women, men and children in her country. Pope Francis knows Sister Kurien personally as they had met before in the Vatican because of her work to provide love, care and shelter to battered, exploited women, destitute men and street children.

Sister Kurien’s is the founder director of Maher (maternal home), she set up in 1997 at Pune, the second largest city and the cultural capital of Maharashtra.

The organization was born out of a terrible event which left an indelible mark on the Catholic nun’s life. Some years earlier a pregnant woman came to her seeking shelter from a violent husband.

Sister Kurien promised to find her somewhere to stay the following day, but in the meantime, the woman returned to her abusive husband. That very evening, the man set his wife on fire, killing both the woman and her unborn baby.

Fast forward to 2019 and this community and interfaith organization has grown dramatically and now has a number of short-stay and long-stay homes in the Indian States of Jharkhand, Kerala, and Maharashtra.

Maher’s mission is to “create secure and loving homes for women, men and children and enable women to discover their power within and develop self-reliance.”

“Most of the women and children who come to our door, they come with a lot of pain…so naturally we have to make them feel they are very comfortable with us,” Sister Kurien says.

Some 30,000 Indian Catholics, including three cardinals, joined a Mass and public function to give thanks for the life and work of newly canonized St Mariam Thresia at her tomb in a Kerala village on Nov. 16.

The Kerala-born nun was canonized in the Vatican on Oct. 13 along with British Cardinal Henry Newman, Swiss laywoman Marguerite Bays, Brazilian nun Dulce Lopes and Italian nun GiuseppinaVannini.

Cardinal George Alencherry, major archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church, led the Mass of national celebration along with Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay, president of the Indian bishops’ conference, and Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, major arch-bishop of the Syro-Malankara Church. More than 30 bishops and about 600 priests and nuns joined the national celebration in Kuzhikkattussery village, which houses the nun’s tomb. The area now comes under Irinjalakuada Diocese of the Eastern-rite Syro-Malabar Church.