More than 4,800 Salesian scouts and guides from around the country are scheduled to congregate at Nashik, a holy city in Maharashtra State, for their annual national gathering titled, Boscoree.

Organized by the Mumbai Province of the Salesians of Don Bosco, the 13th Boscoree has chosen the theme, ‘Health, Harmony and Holiness.’

As many as 4,815 people have registered for the five-day mega extravaganza that opens on December 30.

Bishop Lourdes Daniel of Nashik will open the meet in the presence of Shri Ravindra Kumar Singhal, Police Commissioner of Nashik. A total of 141 units from 22 states and two Union territories from the Salesian and FMA institutions belonging to the 12 provinces of India will live in 200 tents spread over 16 sub-camps.

Don Bosco and Kilbil schools along with Divyadaan Salesian College of Philosophy, Salesian Training Institute, Sacred Heart Training Centre and Maria Vihar will host the event.

He further says, “The purpose of scouting is to actively engage and support young people in their personal development, empowering them to make a positive contribution to society.”

Unidentified miscreants have vandalized St Thomas Catholic Church and its grotto in Chapatoli village near Duliajan in Assam.

The incident came to light on the morning of December 15 when villagers were going for their works through the church area. They noticed the church door opened and spotted the statue of Mother Mary dislodged from the grotto.

The miscreants also damaged a crucifix after resorting to vandalism inside the church, Johan Lugun, a local resident said.

As the news spread, thousands of people flocked to the village from nearby areas. Police immediately picked up two suspects from the area for questioning.

Pope Francis has erected a new Syro-Malabar diocese in Canada – Mississauga – and appointed Monsignor Jose Kalluvelil as its first bishop. The inauguration of the diocese and installation of the bishop will be decided later, says a press release from the Syro-Malabar Church headquarters in Kochi, Kerala.

On Sunday 2 December, the day the Church celebrated the first Sunday of Advent, in Uttar Pradesh about 150 Hindu fanatics attacked a church and interrupted the prayer with the complicity of the local police. Then they launched an ultimatum to the faithful: either they close the place of Christian worship, or “they will suffer severe consequences.”

Shibu Thomas, founder of Persecution Relief that defends discriminated Christians in India, denounces to AsiaNews: “The police, which should be ‘guardian of the law,’ does not perform its duties and takes a position influenced by pre-judices and bigotry against the Christian minority.”

The attached church is located in Naubasta, in the district of Kanpur. The activist says that the radicals arrived waving orange flags (the colour of Hindu nationalists), singing praises to the god Ram and shouting slogans against Christians. “They sowed fear and terror in the community,” he adds.

Some women in the church have requested police intervention, “believing that they could reason with the fanatics, since it was evident that they were acting out of ignorance.” But the agents imposed the interruption of prayer and asked Christians to leave. Then they also dispersed the troublemakers who, regardless of the presence of the police, threatened to return later.

Rev. Jeetender Singh, in charge of the New India Church of God, tells the Christian network that two days before the incident, the local police inspector had visited the church. On that occasion he informed Pastor A.B. Singh who had been charged with a complaint against him for alleged “forced conversions.” After the attack by the radicals, he reports, the inspector himself refused to collect the complaint of the Christians.

India’s National Commission for Women has accused Catholic Church officials of failing to support and protect a nun who has accused a bishop of raping her.

Chairwoman Rekha Sharma told media in Kochi city on Dec. 1 that the official church was “glorifying” Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar while failing to protect the alleged victim.

“They [church officials] are glorifying the accused bishop,” Sharma said after meeting a delegation of Catholics who sought the commission’s intervention to provide security for the nun and her supporters in a convent.

Sharma alleged that church officials were not listening or acting to protect the nuns. The church has also failed by not having an internal system to report sex abuse, she said.

“There was nobody she [the nun] could go to and complain. We have also written to the church urging them to constitute internal complaint committees where women can complain,” she said.

The 48-year-old nun, former superior of the Missionaries of Jesus congregation, complained to Kerala police in July that Bishop Mulakkal raped her 13 times between 2014 and 2016.

Five other nuns, who be-long to the congregation that functions under the bishop’s patronage, held a public protest calling for the bishop’s arrest. He was arrested on Sept. 21 but a court bailed him on Oct. 15.

The biggest church in Arunachal Pradesh was blessed on December 5 in one of the last villages of the north-eastern India.

Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, blessed the Sacred Heart Church at Neotan, a small village in Changlang district.

The marked, the day, the Neotan villagers accepted Catholic faith 19 years ago. Neotan sits on India’s border with Myanmar.

Msgr Elias Gonsalves, the new archbishop of Nagpur, will focus on dialogue as his priority.

Speaking to AsiaNews, he said he was “humbled” about his appointment because “the Archdiocese of Nagpur is an old diocese, with its own rich roots” and can be considered a “cultural, political and religious centre of India; hence, dialogue will be a priority in this multifaceted diocese.”

Intolerance towards religious minorities, especially Christians, is on the rise among young Indians, warns Michael Williams, dean of Mount Carmel Schools in India, during a meeting in the British House of Lords organised by a Christian group, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.

Citing government figures, the Indian educationist noted that attacks against religious communities have jumped by 30 percent in the past three years with around a thousand incidents in 2017, 111 people killed and more than 2,500 wounded.

According to Williams, India’s “fundamentalist” government is to blame for creating a climate of intolerance and violation of human rights in the country akin to the current radicalisation in Islamic countries and the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.

In his view, the modus operandi of the incidents is very similar and include the ‘return home’ movement to convert people to Hinduism.