Category: From The States

The COVID-19 death toll in United Kingdom has reached nearly 9,000. At least 17 workers in National Health Service have so far died from the coronavirus. Mother Teresa Sister Sienna, Indian doctors Hamza Pacheeri and Jitendra Rathod, nurse Beena George, and care worker Sinto George are among the confirmed Indian victims.

The U.K. has been effectively in lockdown since March 23 due to coronavirus. Under the strict measures, people can only leave their homes for essential purposes, such as buying food or medicine. The UK’s social distancing rules are highly likely to remain in force for several more weeks, despite early signs that the coronavirus outbreak is slowing.

While UK faces this long battle, Indians in UK have been playing a big part. Doctors, nurses, care workers, restaurant chefs have been lauded for their great service in these critical times.

The National Health Service (NHS) relies greatly upon doctors, nurses and carers who come from countries all around the world. According to recent statistics, of the nearly 330,000 doctors around 30,000 had their primary qualification in India. This accounts for the single biggest nationality of doctors qualified abroad. The number does not include those of Indian origin who qualified outside of India.

Archbishop Peter Machado has promised to light candles at 9 pm on April 5 as recommended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of the country’s campaign against coronavirus pandemic.

“May this gesture of lighting of candles and recitation of prayers bring our families closer together and also with our countrymen in these very anxious moments,” Archbishop Machado says in a message to the priests, nuns and friends in the archdiocese with headquarters in Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka state in southern India.

The prelate said he has written to the state chief minister “promising our prayers and support, and expressing our sincere appreciation and gratitude to him, and to his ministers and the public personnel (doctors, nurses, police etc.) for their dedicated and selfless service in this time of Coronavirus crisis.”

To assist the nation in its fight against COVID-19, nuns of the Apostolic Carmel (AC) congregation are utilising the lockdown period for stitching protective gowns for the doctors of St John’s Hospital, Bengaluru.

The sisters have stitched nearly 70 doctor gowns till now and have a target of making 100 more protective dresses.

The material for these gowns is being provided the St. John’s Hospital. The nuns are using the infrastructure of their community college, which is currently closed due to the pandemic, to make these dresses.

Besides, these nuns, who are spread across the country, are doing their bit by reaching out to the underprivileged residing in the slum areas with free masks, sanitizes and food items during this crisis.

In Mumbai’s Bandra, Gujarat’s Mehsana and Kerala’s Kozhikode they are preparing masks and distributing them among the villagers and passerby for free.

Stating that a mere conversion of a scheduled caste man from Hindu religion to Christian religion will not make him a Brahmin or a millionaire and hence it is unfair to deny him the reservation facility.

Telangana high court has appreciated the state of Telangana for creating 2 per cent reservations to such converts in social welfare Gurukul school admissions.

The bench of chief justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and justice A Abhishek Reddy was hearing a public interest plea filed by P Srinivas of Hyderabad who challenged the notification earmarking 2 per cent reservations for Dalit Christians issued by the social welfare department seeking applications for admissions into 5th Class.

The bench pointed out that the purpose of reservations was to uplift those who were weak and deprived. The petitioner’s counsel Harinath argued that once an SC person converts to Christianity, they cannot be granted a reservation.

Brushing aside this contention, the bench said that the state and the society should never try to keep a person backwards. By conversion, only the nomenclature of the person changes, but not his backwardness, poverty etc. The central philosophy of the reservations is to attend to the more oppressed and backwards, the bench said.

If the State of Telangana decides to be more liberal and provides some space for the converts, there is nothing wrong in it, the bench said. You have to look at the purpose. The state wants to uplift those who were suppressed for thousands of years whose conversion to Christianity will not make them forward, the CJ said. We cannot let these oppressed sections lag behind, he said and posted the case to four weeks. The state’s special counsel Sanjeev Kumar said that these reservations are provided in only social welfare Gurukul schools. The bench told the state counsel to file his counter on these issues.

The Catholic archbishop of Patna has finally broken his silence, and in a pastoral letter to Catholics in Patna Arch-diocese has made it clear that the Church stands for the fundamental principles of the Constitution and a non-discriminatory and humane policy towards refugees.

Preparations are underway for a stand – in and candlelight demonstration in support of Constitutional values at Patna. United Christian Forum, a collective of leading churches is organizing the campaign to express the concern of the Christian community over what is seen as the attempts to erode the fundamental values of the Indian Constitution. The demonstration is scheduled for the evening of March 14.

Earlier this week, a pastoral letter from Catholic Archbishop William D’Souza was read out in most Catholic parishes.

The Archbishop, in the letter expressed his ‘concern over the current situation in the country,’ while recalling the ‘sterling role of the Church in nation building, and affirming the plural culture, identities, and constitutional values.

As many as 366 incidents of hate and targeted violence against Christians occurred in India in 2019, according to the Religious Liberty Commission (RLC), an initiative of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI).

The report was released on March 13 in New Delhi.

A consummately organized hate campaign against India’s Muslim population, beginning mid-December 2019, and erupting in a pogrom in mid-February 2020 against them in their ghettos in the northeastern suburbs of the Indian capital city New Delhi, has not only delayed the analysis of the persecution of Christians in the year gone by but raised structural questions on the security of all religious minorities in the country, with questions for the Church and the Believers’ community, if they can ever think of a haven in their motherland where one group is so brutally targeted.

Anitha Vinod, the first person to recover from Covid-19 virus in Bihar, says her firm faith in Jesus and strict adherence to government guidelines has saved her from the deadly disease.

“I got scared when the first report came on March 22. But that did not shake my belief in God,” said the 45-year-old Protestant woman, who is now at her home in Digha, a western suburb in Patna, after being discharged on March 30 from a hospital in the state capital.

The native of Kerala, who married Vinod Venkatraman, a social worker from Tamil Nadu, said she read the Bible in the hospital to fight her loneliness and anxiety.

She and her husband, who is also a Bible teacher, had gone to Nepal on March 2 but had to return to Patna six days later to meet her elder son Vivin, who returned from Italy. “Vivin returned from Pisa via Rome and Delhi on March 5. He was kept under two-week home isolation until March 18. He also went through medical screening at Delhi and Rome airports,” Anitha told reporters.