A more than five decades old Catholic Church, presby-tery, and boarding school were burned down, while a convent was taken over by suspected outlaws in riot-hit Manipur state in northeastern India at the weekend, Church officials said. The fresh wave of violence erupted on June 4 as the federal government appointed a three-member judicial commission to probe ethnic violence in the state that has claimed 98 lives so far and displaced over 45,000 people.
“We were informed that St. Joseph Church, its presbytery, and a school boarding attached to the parish were set on fire and the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC) convent in the parish is currently under the control of outlaws whose identity is not yet established,” a senior diocesan priest from the Archdiocese of Imphal, who did not want to be named, told on June 5.
St. Joseph Parish at Sugnu, a small township at the southern tip of the Kakching district inhabited by the Meitei and Kuki communities, is one of the oldest Catholic churches in the archdiocese.
Hundreds of houses belonging to Christians in the township were burned down a couple of days before.
“We cannot go to the affected locality to get a ground report due to restrictions, but credible sources informed us about the arson and other developments,” the priest said.
He said the parish has more than 4,000 members from 35 villages in its vicinity, where Christians have abandoned their houses and fled to safer places including relief camps.