St Pius X College, the major seminary of the Arch-diocese of Bombay, October 5 celebrated its sixty years of existence.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay, celebrated the thanksgiving Mass at the seminary located at Goregaon West.
The seminary has been instrumental in training ‘Ambassadors for Christ’ for Western India and beyond, the cardinal said. He also thanked all associated with the establishment and growth of the seminary since 1960.
The cardinal prayed that the seminary continue to send forth messengers for Christ.
The seminary is named after Pope Pius X (1835–1914), who was known for vigorously opposing modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting liturgical reforms and scholastic philosophy and theology.
Seminary training in Bombay Archdiocese had many beginnings starting as early as 1770.

Catholics and Jesuits in the eastern Indian State of Jharkhand are mourning a Belgian priest who worked tirelessly to educate tribal people and the downtrodden.
Father Louis Francken died on Oct. 5 in Constant Lievens Hospital and Research Centre in Mandar, a suburb of Ranchi, the state capital. He was 82 and died of age-related illnesses.
“His first love was education and until the end he was dedicated to his work educating tribal people and the downtrodden so that they can become self-dependent and improve their socioeconomic conditions in society,” Father Ajay Soreng, secretary to the Ranchi Jesuit provincial, told.

St Xavier’s College of Management and Techno-logy in Patna October 6 conferred the Xavier Pride of Bihar Award 2020 on Saikat Guha, the new director of Centre for Quantum Networks under the University of Arizona in the United States.
The award was presented during an online interactive session the Patna-born scientist had with the students of the Jesuit college. Guha was appointed the director of CQN in August this year. His team has been given the task of developing the internet of the future, ruled by quantum mechanical pro-perties.

The publication of a rape accused bishop’s picture with Pope Francis in a feast day greeting has upset a group of Catholic women in India.
A press release issued by Sisters in Solidarity on October 6 says its members “are perturbed to see a greeting that is being circulated on the occasion of the feast of St Francis of Assisi where the picture of Bishop Franco Mulakkal is put alongside with Pope Francis.”

There is a mixed bag in governance in India these days. On one hand, Muslims are demonized, Christians’ charity and philanthropic works are linked to the forced conversion debate and quite often sedition laws or the controversial Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) are used to silence dissent.
Then there is the latent anguish of the middle class and poor. There is also an agrarian crisis. In any other political set-up, opposition parties could have gone in for the kill and cornered India’s ruling dispensation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But often the misguided moves by opposition parties like “creating pandemonium” in parliament come to the rescue of Modi’s publicity wing. The goalposts are changed and the battle which should have been to expose fault lines in the new farm bills goes into another realm.
Steered by an ostensibly decisive and determined Prime Minister, the Indian government is in serious confabulation with the Chinese leadership these days. But there could be a brief lesson for Modi’s leadership to learn from the Chinese context. The reasons could be multiple but how long can Modi brave through the situation with the argument that the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy cannot be solely blamed for all the ills and limitations?
“It is appalling that human rights defenders are locked up in overcrowded prisons and continuously denied bail despite calls by the UN to decongest prisons and release political prisoners during the pandemic,” says Josef Benedict, CIVICUS Asia-Pacific civic space researcher.
As many as 332 people were reportedly arrested under the sedition law between 2016 and 2018, though the conviction rates were very poor. Mob lynchings were carried out between 2014 and 2019 in various parts of India and in many instances it has been suggested that there is now perhaps a type of institutionalization of the communal venom.

Several Catholic groups in India have expressed relief after the Vatican removed its controversial envoy from the country.
Pope Francis on August 29 suddenly transferred Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, apostolic nuncio to India and Nepal, to Brazil amid accusations of inaction against allegedly corrupt bishops.
“I saw the nuncio’s transfer as a small moral victory, not something to gloat about, but more a sense of relief,” chhotebhai, coordinator of the Indian Catholic Forum and former president of the All India Catholic Union, the largest lay association in the country, told NCR.
Chhotebhai says he had taken up with the nuncio issues such as the controversy around then-Bishop Gallela Prasad of Cuddapah, in the southern Indian State of Andhra Pradesh. Prasad faced a criminal complaint for allegedly misappropriating diocesan funds to lead a luxurious life with his alleged wife and son.
Another request to the nuncio was to act against Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, who has been accused of raping a nun multiple times.
However, the Vatican later removed Prasad from his post, and accepted Mulakkal’s request for temporary resignation to face the court case. The apostolic nunciature in New Delhi did not respond to request for comment for this story, or on the accusations made against Diquattro during his tenure in India. The Holy See press office also did not respond to a request for comment. Vikram K. Antony, a Catholic politician in Bengaluru, says he had written to the nuncio about the arrest of a few priests in the murder of a seminary rector. “There was no action or inquiry into our complaints,” he told NCR.
Another person happy with the nuncio’s transfer is Kochurani Abraham, a feminist theologian who accompanies the rape survivor nun and her supporters.
Sr Anupama Kelama-ngalathuveli, the spokes-person for the survivor and her supporters, corrobora-ted Abraham’s narration of the developments. She, however, declined to talk further as the trial in the case began on August 13.
Saldanha, who has headed women’s offices under bishops’ conferences in Asia and India, dismisses Diquattro’s tenure in India as insignificant.
John Dayal, current spokesperson of the All India Catholic Union, says people complained against Diquattro because of their ignorance about a nuncio’s role.
A nuncio, according to Dayal, is “not a monitor, or a policeman and magistrate, to admonish, administer instant justice or mete out punishment.” Every bishop, he explains, is sovereign in his diocese and answerable only to the Pope.

Since there are no data on the deaths of migrant workers from COVID-19, the question of compensation “does not arise,” India’s Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Santosh Gangwar, told parliament. This has sparked harsh reactions by opposition parties and civil society groups.
Against this backdrop, internal migrants are the group that suffered the most. The labour minister admitted that more than 10 million migrants have returned to their places of origin.

Jesuit Father Erik Breye, a seminary professor, retreat preacher and a confessor and counsellor for seminarians and nuns, died of cardiac arrest on September 18 in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand State in eastern India. He was 79. Father Raymond Kerketta, socius (secretary) to the Ranchi Jesuit province, noted in a condolence message that Father Breye was a member of the Society of Jesus for 61 years and a priest for 48 years.

Father Paul Achandy, the former prior general of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, has taken over as the new Chancellor of Christ University in Bengaluru. Father Achandy, on assuming office on September 21, addressed the faculty and students of the university. The university has more than 18,000 students and more than 800 faculty members.

Even after scoring a century, retired Jesuit Bishop Linus Nirmal Gomes retains his great enthusiasm, profound faith in God and love for people. He marked his 100th birthday on Sept. 7 and became the most senior bishop in India. He celebrated the milestone with fellow confreres in the Jesuit community at St Xavier’s College in Kolkata, his retirement home since 2014.