More than 45,000 people have attended the jubilee of a Marian apparition in Odisha, eastern India.
“Where there is Mother Mary there is Jesus and where there is Jesus there is satisfaction and fulfilment. Mother Mary is not only Mother of God but Mother of everyone who seeks her constant intercession,” said Arch-bishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, the main celebrant for the 25 years of spiritual journey of persecuted Christians.
The Catholic Church “is against all conversions done by force or deception. At the same time, it defends the right of everyone to profess and spread their faith,” said Mgr Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI).
The prelate’s statement comes in the wake of the alleged abduction of two Hindu girls in the Pakistani province of Sindh, who were later forced to convert to Islam and marry two Muslim men. The issue has revived India-Pakistan tensions.
For Archbishop Mascarenhasm “freedom of religion is sacred.” The incident involving the two girls has widened the rift between the two neighbours, already defined by religious differences – Hindu India vs Muslim Pakistan – which was the basis of the violent partition of the British Raj in 1947.
Prominent Indian social activist Swami Agnivesh has sought the intervention of Pope Francis to help five nuns who are facing a church backlash after holding a public protest demanding action against a bishop accused of raping a nun.
Agnivesh, who on Jan. 23 released his detailed letter to the Pope, told ucanews.com that the church’s moves against the nuns were “in effect a punishment given to them for speaking the truth.”
The leader of the Arya Samaj Hindu sect was referring to a case involving Missionaries of Jesus nuns in the southern state of Kerala.
Four nuns, all Kerala natives, came from different parts of India to support their former superior, who filed a police complaint in June 2018 accusing Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar of raping her multiple times between 2014 to 2016. In September, the four joined another nuns from the congregation’s Kerala convent and held a two-week street protest that ended on Sept. 22, a day after the bishop was arrested. They have been staying in Kerala ever since.
The congregation’s current superior recently asked the four nuns to return to their respective convents. The nuns alleged it was a tactic to break their unity and weaken the case against the 54-year-old bishop. The other nun, Sister Neena Rose, has been asked to report to the congregation’s headquarters in Jalandhar and meet superior general Regina Kandamthottu on Jan. 26.
Agnivesh, a 79-year-old Hindu scholar known for his stand against India’s governing pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the nuns were being harassed for their stand for justice.
Expressing confidence in Pope Francis’ “robust sense of justice,” he said he wanted the Pope’s intervention to end the harassment.
His letter said it was “indeed shocking that, while the concerned diocese and its religious orders go easy on the alleged rapist, it is targeting those who stood and struggled for justice for the victim.”
India’s largest forum for Protestant and Orthodox Churches on March 24 launched weeklong prayers for a new government. “Constitutionally, the Indian state cannot have any appeasement to any religion whether majority or minority. The contemporary tendency to polarize people in the name of religion, for political gain, has to be countered,” says a statement from the Policy Governess and Public Witness of the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI).
About 80% of the Indian population is Hindu. Muslims make up almost 15% and Christians are 2.3%.
The Indian Constitution upholds the country as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic that does not discriminate people on the basis of religion, caste, language, gender or ethnicity. “Indian secularism is not the same as that which we see in the Western countries. Our secularism is neither antagonistic nor religiously charged. It is neutral to all religions but respects all religions and non-religious ideas,” the NCCI statement explains.
The All India Catholic Union (AICU), Asia’s oldest Laity organization, has expressed deep concern at the communal polarization that is peaking on the eve of the general elections in the country in April and May, AICU president Lancy D’Cunha and spokes-man Dr John Dayal said in a statement here on March 24.
The AICU leadership said many communities including Muslims and Dalits (formerly untouchables) are victims of targeted violence. Of particular concern is the sudden and sustained violence against the Christian community in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Christian leaders from Jaunpur gave a graphic account of the situation when they addressed the working committee of the AICU at Navsadhana, the noted Catholic mass media centre in Varanasi.
Uttar Pradesh had, in the brief period between September and December 2018, seen as many as 109 cases of violence against Christian pastors, small house churches, and women and men faithful at worship in small towns and villages. This was the highest in the country. More than 40 cases had taken place in Jaunpur alone. In the first months of 2019, the region recorded 15 more cases.
The AICU noted with concern the continuing targeted violence by hard core activists of the Sangh Parivar (right wing Hindu nationalists) in any parts of the country. In most cases, the police was either complicit, or stood by watching. The state impunity had further encouraged mobs taking the law in their own hands.
A national rally in New Delhi on March 12 urged political parties to include in their election manifestos the reservation for Dalit Christians and Muslims.
“We have to see that our rights are rightly accepted. We should not lose our fight,” said Archbishop George Antony-samy of Madras Mylapore while address-ing the rally.
The National Council of Dalit Christians (NCDC) organized the rally with support from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and the National Council of Churches in India.
The rally started at 10 am from Janpath ended at Jantar Mantar, both close to the Indian parliament building.
Besides Archbishop Antonysamy, three bishops from Tamil Nadu joined the rally. Monsignor Susai Sebastian, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Delhi, and Danam, a retired civil service officer and NCDC president led the rally. Dhanam said the main purpose of the rally was to demand from the government Scheduled Caste status for Christians and Muslims of Dalit origin. These groups are as socially, economically, and politically weak as their counterparts in Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim religions. Yet they are discriminated on the basis of religion, Dhanam regretted..
The rally demanded deletion of paragraph 3 of the Constitution Scheduled Caste Order 1950 that made reservation on the basis of religion.
Dalit Christians and Muslims have appealed to national and regional political parties to include in their election manifesto a promise to grant the Scheduled Caste Status to them.
Bishop John Nellikunnel of Idukki has written to his priests explicitly telling them not to take any position favouring any political party or ideology. The Bishop’s March 9 circular to priests assumes importance as Kerala’s more than 18% Christian population has significant sway in certain key pockets of central Kerala.
The state is scheduled to go to poll on April 23. The Idukki bishop has cautioned his priests from engaging in election meetings and taking sides in political debates lest their actions harm the community. “We are called to be shepherds with the smell of the sheep. As spiritual leaders of our people, we should not take any position favouring any sides. Our people do not want us to be actively involved in electoral politics in the present context. Our people are intelligent enough to decide in elections,” Bishop Nellikunnel wrote.
He also reminded the priest their duty before God to become symbols of charity and unity.
“Therefore I appeal to all of you to abstain from election-related propagandas, statements and meetings. By our words and activities, we should not give any scandals to the faithful and to the public.”
The Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council has sought change in the poll date for the southern Indian state. The state’s 39 parliamentary and 18 assembly seats will go to poll on April 18, which coincides with Maundy Thursday, an important observance for Christians across denominations.
On March 11, Abp. Antony Pappusamy of Madurai and president of the council, requested the Election Commission of India (ECI) to change the polling date. The letter stated that polling date on Maundy Thursday would not be conducive for the Christians as it was in the middle of the Holy Week observance (April 14 to 21).
The archbishop said that Christians working as government school teachers and officials engaged in election duty will not be able to attend Mass on Maunday Thursday when Christians observe the commemoration of the final meal – Last Supper – that He had with His disciples a day before His crucifixion and death on the cross. The council cited another concern that many schools run by dioceses are located inside the campus of churches and many across the state are polling stations.
When Sunil Kiro enjoyed some moonshine to unwind after a hard day’s work at a tea estate in India’s northeastern Assam State, he had no idea he would never be able to see again.
He was among an estimated 500 victims of a tragedy that swept the region on Feb. 20 when 160 people died and others were left per-manently blind, or with other serious health issues such as damaged kidneys or livers, as a result of locally brewed alcohol that proved toxic to their systems.
“Now I am surrounded by darkness. I have to identify people from their voice,” said the 38-year-old, who lives in Jorhat district under Dibrugarh Diocese. The deaths in Assam occurred few days back after 100 people died from drinking illegal liquor made with house-hold disinfectants and anti-freeze in two other Indian states.
There are about six million people working the tea gardens of Assam, making up 17% of the state’s 31 million population, according to Catholic leaders in the region.
Two French missionaries were remembered at the 60th Tibetan National Uprising Day commemoration in Miao town in Arunachal Pradesh.
“Tibet and Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh have an age-old connection,” said Likro Mossang, women president of Miao Diocese in east Arunachal Pradesh.
“French missionaries Nicolas Krick and Augustine Bourry were killed on their way to Tibet in 1854. They sowed the first seeds of Christianity in Arunachal Pradesh 165 years ago before they were killed on August 2 the same year at the Tibet-Arunachal border region by a Mishmi Tribe chieftain.”
Tibetans all over the world gather together every year on March 10 to pay homage to the thousands of heroes who laid their lives, resisting brutal suppression of the Chinese Communist occupation forces in 1959.
“Although Fathers Krick and Bourry could not enter Tibet, my presence with you as a guest on the 60th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day is like fulfilling their dream,” Mossang said addressing some 500 Tibetan women from the Miao Tibetan Settlement. With 500 families of more than 3,000 people Miao has the largest Tibetan settlement in north-eastern India.
