As members of the Dalit caste were protesting the Supreme Court order that prevented the immediate arrest of those being violent towards them across India on April 2, the Bishops of Odisha and other church leaders have planned to deliberate on the Dalits of Odisha on April 4.
The Indian church published the ‘Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India Dalit Policy,’ on 13 December 2016, as an ethical imperative and the Gospel-mandate for the Catholic Church in India for the empowerment of the Dalits.
The recent proposal by Germany’s bishops to allow some Protestant spouses of Catholics to receive Holy Communion under certain conditions is meeting seriousresistanceinGermany,as well as opposition from some Church leaders elsewhere.
On April 4, the KölnerStadt- Anzeiger newspaper reported that seven German bishops — including Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne — have written an urgent appeal to the Vatican in protest against the proposal.
According to German media, the seven bishops said in their letter that they believe the proposal contradicts Catholic doctrine, undermines Church unity and exceeds the competence of the bishops’ conference. The letter, leaked to the media April 4, was sent last month to both the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, the president of the German bishops’ conference, sent a letter to Germany’s bishops, written and released immediately after the seven bishops’ letter was leaked. In it, the cardinal defended the bishops’ conference’s decision, saying it was consistent with theological and ecumenical texts and canon law.
Cardinal Marx, who according to a prelate invariably invokes the Pope to justify his positions, also said it was the result of “the encouragement of Pope Francis to take further steps in ecume- nism.”
At their spring conference in February, Germany’s bishops voted in favour of producing a guide, or pastoral handout, to allow some Protestant spouses to receive Holy Communion under certain circumstances.
A Chinese government official who oversees religious affairs said that government restrictions on bishop appointments are not a violation of religious freedom, as he emphasized that religions in China must “adapt to socialist society.” “I believe there is no religion in human society that transcends nations.”
Mounted on a donkey, the priest moved slowly as boys and young men waved palm branches and sang hymns to Jesus during a Palm Sunday procession in a central Indian parish.
Fr Thomas Rajamanikyam and his parishioners at St Joseph Church in Nanda Nagar, Indore Diocese enacted the biblical account of Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem, an event Catholics commemorate on Palm Sunday, which this year fell on March 25.
The parish priest on a donkey leading the Palm Sunday procession surprised many. Kanti Kumrawat, a grandmother and parishioner, said it was first time they had such a procession and never heard of any other parish in the vicinity having commemorated the event in such a way.
Cardinal George Alencherry, the head of the Syro-Malabar Church, on March 25 shared with lay people his views on the land deal row that has pitted him against the priests of the Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly.
“Whatever I and the auxiliary bishops have given out in a statement on the sale of land belonging to the church earlier, is true. It is correct and other news doing the rounds on the land row shouldn’t be believed,” the cardinal said leading the Palm Sunday ceremony at the St Mary’s Basilica, in Kochi, Kerala.
On March 24, the cardinal and his two junior prelates – Bishops Sebastian Edayanthrath and Jose Puthenveettil – released a press release expressing their happiness in resolving the land sale controversy that has reached even the Supreme Court of India.
The statement said a meeting of the priests’ council earlier in the day had decided to resolve the problem amicably.
Addressing the Sunday Mass, the cardinal acknowledged power and money make people impure. “All are impure in one way or the other. You and I are also among those who are impure. Individuals, families and the Church need to be purified,” the cardinal told the faithful.
The land controversy had raised doubts about the cardinal leading the Palm Sunday ceremonies in the cathedral as some priests and lay people reportedly were opposed his presence.
While some of the laity claimed the Mass participation was comparatively less, others said the cathedral had the usual attendance.
The cardinal had in a YouTube video uploaded on March 24 said each Palm Sunday initiates a purification process. He referred to Jesus expelling the merchants and the money changers from the Temple in his address.
“We should purify ourselves and purification at the time of Palm Sunday should be a deep one,” he asserted.
One of the two prelates, who brokered peace in troubled Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese in Kerala, says he is “extremely happy” with the outcome of their efforts.
“It was indeed divine intervention that the priests and bishops could agree to resolve their problems in true Christian spirit just before the Holy Week,” Cardinal Baselios Mar Cleemis Cardinal Cleemis, heads the Syro-Malankara Church, told Matters India on March 26.
Cardinal Cleemis and Archbishop Maria Calist Soosa Pakiam of Trivandrum met five times with the priests and bishops of Ernakulam-Angamaly to resolve the land sale dispute that alleged caused huge financial loss to the Syro-Malabar archdiocese.
Archbishop Pakiam is the president of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council and a top leader of the Latin Church in the southern Indian state.
Cardinal Cleemis said the two volunteered to intervene in the matter out of concern for a “Sister Church” embroiled in a controversy causing serious damage to the mission of the entire Church in India.
Several priests of Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese had demanded the resignation of Cardinal George Alencherry, their bishop and head of the Syro-Malabar Church. They accused the cardinal of lack of transparency in financial matters and misleading the priests’ council. Some lay people had approached even the Supreme Court to press for police case against.
Cardinal Cleemis, the immediate past president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, said he and Archbishop Pakiam met separately with the protesting priests and Cardinal Alencherry and his two junior prelates.
After a day-long negotiation on March 23, the two groups agreed to settle the matter amicably. Cardinal Alencherry met the priests to express his regrets over the controversy.
Cardinal Alencherry’s address to the priests helped break the ice as he had been avoiding such a meeting since the controversy arose. “Lack of communication between the cardinal and the priests was a major problem,” Cardinal Cleemis explained.
Vatican City has been governed by men since it was established as an independent state in 1929. A year ago, however, a woman joined the upper ranks: Barbara Jatta, the first female director of the Vatican Museums.
In the 12 months since her appointment, Ms.Jatta has put her stamp on the role, resisting some of her predecessor’s initiatives and forging her own path.
Ms.Jatta was the only woman on an initial list of six candidates, and she was chosen by Pope Francis. In the post since January, she oversees some 200,000 objects and an array of museums, papal apartments, sculpture courtyards and other sites, including the Sistine Chapel.
The chapel is one of the Roman Catholic Church’s holiest places, where Popes are elected. It is also packed almost daily with ever-larger crowds scrambling to gaze at Michelangelo’s famous frescoed ceiling. The Vatican Museums say visitor numbers in 2017 are expected to reach a record, significantly exceeding the six million that Ms.Jatta’s predecessor, Antonio Paolucci, defined as an annual upper limit. The escalating total pose the toughest challenge to Ms.Jatta’s directorship.
Ms.Jatta is friendly yet firm, and she expresses high ambitions for herself and for the institution. In an interview, she said that she had worked for 20 years in the Vatican Library, leading its prints department from 2010. When she heard of her nomination for the Vatican Museums role, she said, “it came as a shock at first, to face such a big change.”
Regarding her gender, Ms.Jatta said she “didn’t realize what it meant until I started the job. Whenever I attended conferences or public events, so many women would come up to me, saying: ‘We are proud, and you are also, in some way, representing us.’”
Her office, which overlooks the Michelangelo-designed dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, was filled with family pictures, a framed photograph of Pope Francis, and the portrait bust of another predecessor: the neo-Classical sculptor Antonio Canova, the first director of the papal museums.
Ms.Jatta said that art had played a big role in her family: Her mother and sister are art restorers; her grandmother, who was originally from Russia, was a painter; and her paternal ancestors founded an archaeological museum named after the family in Ruvo di Puglia, in southern Italy.
The head of the Catholic Church in India on March 20 urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to invite Pope Francis to visit the country. “The Prime Minister reacted positively to this desire of the whole Catholic community,” Cardinal Oswald Gracias, president of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), told media persons after his meeting with Modi.
The Cardinal, one of the eight top advisors of Pope Francis, was elected the CBCI president, during the biennial plenary of the conference in early February at Bengaluru. This was his first meeting with the Prime Minister in his new capacity.
Cardinal Gracias described the meeting was “open, cordial and frank” and it helped the two leaders to know each other better.
The Cardinal had a one-to-one session with the Prime Minister, said Monsignor Joseph Chinnayyan, CBCI deputy secretary general, who accompanied the Cardinal. “This was the first time a Church leader has such meeting with the Prime Minister. Normally, we meet the Prime Minister or the president in groups,” he added.
The Prime Minister promised to find a suitable time slot for the Pope’s visit as scores of world leaders plan to visit India this year.
Pope Francis had expressed his desire to visit India several times last year. He repeated it in March when a minister from Kerala called on the Pope.
Cardinal Gracias also brought to the Prime Minister’s attention the growing anxiety among Christians over “sporadic attacks on minority institutions and personnel in different parts of the country.” “We are small community but our contribution to nation building is between 15 to 20%” the Cardinal repeated what he told the preminer.
A recent article in a Vatican magazine on widespread exploitation of nuns in the Catholic Church has found many takers in India, home to the world’s largest number of women religious. “A welcome statement but late in coming,” Sister Teresa Kotturan, former vice president of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, reacted to the March 1 article in the monthly, “Women, Church, World.”
Fr Paul Thelakat, who has arbitrated several disputes between nuns and priests in Kerala, southern India, too says the “cry of the magazine from Rome is too late.”
Nevertheless, the fact that an official Vatican publication has “come out with some painful truth within the Church” has cheered Presentation Sister Shalini Mulackal, the first woman to head the male-dominated Indian Theological Association. The article in the monthly women’s magazine of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano is based on the comments of several unnamed nuns. It describes the drudgery of nuns who work as cooks, cleaners, waiters on tables for cardinals, bishops and priests. It also narrates how some work in the residences of “men of the Church, waking at dawn to prepare breakfast and going to sleep once dinner is served.”
They also keep the house of priests and bishops in order and clean and iron the laundry for them for “random and often modest” remuneration. The situation is no better in India where patriarchal norms and culture in the Church and society shackle women religious, says Sister Kotturan, who once headed the Indian province of the congregation based in Kentucky, United States. She is currently the NGO Representative at the UN Sisters of Charity Federation.
The Syrian Mar Thoma Church and the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church on March 22 lashed out at the Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala for deciding to open closed liquor vends.
The Kerala Catholic Bishop’s Conference (KCBC) had also slammed the “liquor policy” of the Vijayan government.
The Church heads have said that the government was operating on the sly to open new liquor vends, bars and toddy shops, riding on the Supreme Court verdict.
In 2016, when the Oommen Chandy-led Congress government demitted office, there were two dozen bars that operated in five-star hotels, while around 700 bars in the three-and four-star hotels were shut down.
Chandy’s policy envisaged prohibition in Kerala by 2023.
In the Vijayan government’s tenure so far, under the Supreme Court directives, there are close to 200 outlets, including four-star hotel bars and wine and beer parlours open in the state and according to reports from the state excise department another 150 bars are going to open soon.
The Thiruvalla headquartered Syrian Mar Thoma Church chief Joseph Mar Thoma Metropolitan said that it is unfortunate that the very same people who spoke about practicing the policy of abstinence are doing exactly the opposite.
With a sizeable Mar Thoma community in Chengannur constituency, Joseph Mar Thoma Metropolitan said that he will direct his community to exercise their franchise according to their conscience.
Mor Coorilose Gee-varghese, head of the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, Niranam dio-cese, said that he failed to understand the logic of this Left government in coming out with this sort of policy, when there is a crucial assembly by-election coming up.
