Ten tribal and dalit girls from various parts of India were honoured for their academic excellence at a recent function in the national capital.

The awards have been hailed as a novel and unique move by the Catholic Church in India to reach out and encourage the less fortunate girl children, Sister Talisha Nadukudiyil, national secretary for the Council for Women under the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), said at the October 6 award ceremony.

According to the Sisters of Destitute nun, the move will bring to the limelight those blessed with intellectual acuity to reach the high spectrum of life.The selection of the awardees was made on the basis of their outstanding performance in studies, despite their financial, cultural and geographical hedges, the nun explained. This is the second year the award program was organized by the women council in collaboration with the CBCI Offices for Dalit and Tribal Affairs.

Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malankara Church Cardinal Mar Cleemis has highlighted the relevance of family values for the betterment of society. Delivering the inaugural address at the second Major Archi-episcopal Assembly of the church here on Oct. 8, he said, family values and religious belief were increasingly coming under attack. If the family lost belief in God, it would reflect on religion and society, he added.

Former Bp John Baptist Sequeira of Chikmagalur died on October 9 due to old age ailments. The end came at the Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Hosur Road, Bengaluru. He was 89. The funeral Service was held at 3 pm on October 11 at the Home for the Aged (Little Sisters of the Poor) in Bengaluru. Thereafter, the burial took place at St Patrick’s Parish Cemetery on Hosur Road.

On Sunday mornings, when they are not working in the fields that surround Deshnur, around 200 of the village’s 12,000 people go to Snanika Arulappanavara Virakta Mutt, a shrine where they attend mass that a Catholic priest holds in Kannada.

Yet, not a single inhabitant of the village is Christian. Within the imposing building of large stone blocks, also known as the Church of St John the Baptist, is a tabernacle in the form of a Shiva linga – a reminder that it once was a Lingayat mutt.

The Jesuit priest who conducts mass and runs the church, Menino Gonsalves, introduces himself as Sri Menino Swamy. He wears saffron robes and a rudraksha mala as his congregation worships Jesus and Mary in Lingayat style, burning camphor and agarbatties and with vibhuti smeared on their foreheads.

Since its establishment as a church in 1947, five Christian priests have served in the shrine, said Sri Menino. “We all adopted Hindu names,” he said. “Our founding father, Armado Alvares, called him-self Sri Animananda Swamy. Father Sebastien became Swami Arulananda.”

All the Jesuit priests who have served at the church became vegetarians and wore rudrakshamalas, he said. Sri Menino sees no incongruity in the mingling of Hindu and Christian elements in the mutt. It is an experiment in social integration, Sri Menino said. Prelates of the Catholic Church described the shrine as an example of assimilation of local culture.

Sri Menino, who has been in charge of the church for 11 years, dismissed as an “unnecessary controversy” the uproar on social media about alleged conversions at the shrine, triggered by photographs of Belgaum Bishop Derek Fernandes wearing saffron robes and with a tilak on his forehead during a recent visit to the village.

More than 200 incidents of violence against Christians reported in India, according to data compiled by advocacy group, New Delhi-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) – India.

According to ADF-India, 218 incidents in 243 days of 2019, 159 mob violence incidents and 27 incidents a month were recorded. Since the beginning of this year, the reported incidents of violence against Christians have been reported on United Christian Forum (UCF) toll-free helpline number. “Modus operandi followed in all 159 cases of mob violence are the same. A mob accompanied by the police arrives at the prayer service, shouts slogans and beats up the members of the congregation including women and children. Then the pastors are arrested or detained by the police under the false allegation of conversion,” A C Michael, development director for ADF- India, said in a press statement.

According to him, in some cases, friendly media is taken along to ensure publication of their side of story. What’s more important to notice is that till today none of these false allegations have ever been sustained in a court of law. In fact, almost all of the arrested pastors have either been released on bail or acquitted as the police or the unruly crowd has failed to provide evidence of forceful conversions.

“It will not be exaggeration if it is stated that many Christians are experiencing restrictions of their freedom to practice their faith in one way or the other in a large part of India’s territory that is 23 states out of 28 states of India,” he said.

Uttar Pradesh leads the chart with 51 incidents followed by 41 in Tamil Nadu, 24 in Chhattisgarh, 17 in Jharkhand, 16 in Karnataka, 14 in Telangana, 12 in Andhra Pradesh, 9 in Maharashtra, 6 in Haryana, 5 in Bihar, 4 in Delhi, 3 in Odisha, 2 each in Himachal Pradesh,

“Something has happened in India which reminds me of what happened in Germany during the Nazi era.

After Hitler took power in January 1933 almost the whole of Germany went mad, people shouting ‘Heil Hitler,’ ‘Sieg Heil,’ ‘Juden Verecke’ and adoring that madman like hypnotized zombies. One can see it all on YouTube.

Germans are such highly cultured people, who produced great scientists like Max Planck and Einstein, great writers like Goethe and Schiller, great poets like Heine, great musicians like Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, great reformers like Mart-in Luther, great philosophers like Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel and Marx, great mathematicians like Leibnitz, Gauss and Riemann, and great statesmen like Frederick the Great and Bismarck. I found every German I met to be a fine person…

The same has happened now to most Indians. Ever since the BJP, which is a right wing Hindu neo-fascist party come to power in 2014, a huge communal propaganda has been unleashed in India against the Indian minorities (particularly the Muslims) by hate speeches, accusing them of killing cows, seducing Hindu girls (love jihad ) etc thus poisoning the minds of most Hindus, who are the majority in India.”

[Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India and former Chairman, Press Council of India.]

A Catholic priest who spent ten days in judicial custody for “conversion” alleges a plot to get him killed in the jail.

“They tried to kill me inch by inch,” Father Benoy John, who was released on bail on September 16, told the Malayala Manorama newspaper.

The 42-year-old priest was arrested on September 6 along with catechist Munna Hansada from a Catholic mission in Rajadaha village under Godda district of Jharkhand State.

Father John, who was fitted with a pacemaker two years ago, said the junior officials of the jail gave him medicines for fever when he complained of severe heart pain.

“I pleaded them with tears to take me to a hospital, which is just two minutes away, but they refused,” recalled the priest, a native of Kerala serving the diocese of Bhagalpur, for the past four years. He also said the jail’s pharmaceutical compounder treated him.

Cardinal Oswald Gracias, head of the Catholic Church in India, is among participants the Vatican has listed for the Special Assembly of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region. The Vatican on September 21 published the list of participants for the October 6-27 to be held in Rome. Pope Francis on October 15, 2017, convened a Special Synodal Assembly on the Pan-Amazon.