As a follow-up activity earmarked by Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) Office for Dalits and Backward Classes, a three-day national conference of Dalit priests and Religious took place at Arnold Bhavan, Hyderabad, on November 13–15. Above 110 participants different parts of the India joined the program to share, deliberate and strategize so as to empower themselves and their people back in parishes and communities. The conference focused on “Pilgrimage Extension and Training.” Several dignitaries addressed and facilitated the members dealing with topics: media and effective pastoral ministry, creative ministries to empower the Dalit community members, and interpersonal relationship.
Category Archives: From The States
Priest’s “Five Loaves” restaurants set new trends
The ‘Anjappam’ collective initiated by a Capuchin priest to feed the hungry with love and respect has opened its fourth branch in Changanacherry in Kottayam district in Kerala on Nov 1st.
The latest addition located in Panachikkal Buildings in the heart of Changanassery town was inaugurated by Capuchin Father Bobby Jose Kattikad, who is popularly known as ‘Bobbyachan.”
Fr Kattikad is known for his preaching, writing and evangelization through television, radio and social media.
Anjappam (five loaves), a concept visualized by Fr Kattikad and supported and facilitated by a community of friends who supports financially or otherwise, irrespective of caste or religion.
Anjappam restaurants have no cash desk or bills. Instead it has a box kept inside where people make contributions if they wish to. During the day, the restaurants act as places where good, healthy meals are available at affordable prices and in the evenings, they are transformed into libraries with reading spaces. It also acts as a hub for discussions and book reviews.
The restaurant chain funds itself through voluntary donations by customers. They uphold the thought that donations need not be in terms of money .Anyone who intends to help the poor and needy always have an option available here. This can be as spending one’s time at the restaurants, serving food and helping with cleaning activities.
The restaurants serve only vegetarian food. The members of the Trust take care to ensure that a majority of the vegetables are acquired locally so that they can provide healthy as well as environment friendly food, which is good for both the body and mind.
Anjappam also plans to distribute basic food packs free of cost to the homeless and other needy sections of society.
Anjappam currently has three other branches in Kerala – Ranni, Neyyattinkara and Kozhencherry.
Bishop asks priests to walk the talk
“Walk the talk is to live the gospel values in day today life. The type of leadership in Pope Francis is participatory leadership. Then only any changes shall happen in clericalism,” said Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak of Berhampur on November 7 in his keynote address at the golden jubilee of Morning Star Regional Seminary, Kolkata.
Bishop Nayak asserted that the root of priestly formation lies in virtues of love, joy and humility.
“Merciful approach of God to all is to define the personality of true pastors. Avoiding luxury and embracing simplicity is the ideal of Francis in life,” said Bishop Nayak, an alumnus of the seminary.
The golden jubilee celebrations had a theme “to love all including those who do not love us.”
Sufficient openness for the laity in the Church in areas such as the diocesan councils for marriage, finance and pastoral is urgent, said the prelate.
He said that the next millennium will be of the laity.
Quoting Pope Francis, Bishop Nayak spoke on marching with joy and hope in current challenging situations of the Church.
In another talk, Father Soosai Mannickam, former staff, spoke about Pope Francis’ pastoral ministry expectations from the priests.
The principle character of a pastor is to know his people, (smell the sheep), the forgiving love of God (who am I to judge), the priest said.
Father Mannickam also noted that Pope Francis’ leadership is to inspire all.
“The new way of evangelizing God’s word is living a life in the values of the Kingdom a life of mercy and kindness in holiness.”
Mother Teresa nuns back in India’s adoption system
The Missionaries of Charity (MC) congregation has agreed to resume its service of giving children for adoption. The congregation founded by St Teresa of Kolkata, commonly known as Mother Teresa, dis-continued giving babies from their orphanages for adoption in Oct. 2015 after disagreeing with a new federal law that allowed single and divorced woman to adopt children.
The congregation has revised its stance and will join the centralized adoption service system set up by the government, said Maneka Gandhi, who heads the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
A delegation of three MC nuns including Sister Mary Prema Pierick met the minister on Oct. 29 and decided that children in its 79 homes can go into family care. The nuns in a Nov. 2 press release said they had agreed to register all their childcare homes with respective state governments as man-dated by the Juvenile Justice Act of 2015. Most MC homes for children are already registered and the remaining homes are in the process of completing registration formalities, the release said.
Indian appointed to new international Charismatic renewal body
The Vatican has appointed an Indian lay leader to the 18-member Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Services, known as CHARIS.
Cyril John, a former Indian bureaucrat, is one of the two Asians appointed by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. The other Asian is Brother James Shin San-Hyun from South Korea.
The dicastery, a department of the Roman Curia, on October 31 announced that Pope Francis has erected a new body, CHARIS, to provide a new, single, international service for the needs of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in the Church.
Rome has appointed Dr Jean-Luc Moens, a member of the Emmanuel Community from Belgium, as the moderator of the new entity, and Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, papal preacher from Italy, as its Ecclesiastical Advisor. Shayne Bennett from Australia represents Oceania in the worldwide body.
John, a native of Kuravilangad in Kerala, got involved in Charismatic renewal movement in 1982. He has been the chairman of the renewal in the Archdiocese of Delhi, chair-man of Indian National Service Team, Chairman of ICCRS Sub-Committee for Asia-Oceania since 2006 and was Vice-President of ICCRS Council from 2007 to 2015, according to a press release from K P Shaji, administrator of the National Charismatic Office based in New Delhi.
Indian Catholic entrepreneur uses skills to fight global poverty
No matter when someone writes to Ashish Gadnis, there is almost no chance he will answer from Austin, Texas, where he lives. He spend in Rwanda and in Brazil, before taking a flight to Myanmar. He’s not a coffee grower, but he will talk about fair trade, and with a huge Benedictine cross on his chest, he will speak to you about Catholic Social Teaching providing a clear goal for his company – taking 100 million people out of poverty by 2026.
And Gadnis knows what poverty is. He grew up in Mumbai, India, in the 1970s when there wasn’t “much options those days in India to get out of poverty.”
“I did not want to stay in that ration line and I realized that I could break the cycle of poverty if I could get a job as a software programmer,” he recalled.
But for a 20-year-old Indian it wasn’t really about education – it was about getting out of the country: “That’s the dogma – if you want a better life, you gotta go.”
He immigrated first to Colombia and then, in 1994, landed in the United States. Ten years later, he was a founder and CEO of a successful IT company.
Indian Christians demand equality for Dalits
India’s Catholics and Protestants jointly observed on November 11 as Dalit Liberation Sunday with liturgy and activities urging an end to discrimination suffered by people of lower-caste origins within the church and society.
Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak, chairman of the Indian bishops’ office for people of socially poor castes and tribes, asked people to remember the 100 poor Christians killed in anti-Christian violence in Odisha State’s Kandhamal 10 years ago. The observation is a “call to the whole Christian community to renew our faith, to awaken our consciousness to be the voice of the voiceless and to stand with vulnerable Dalits in society,” he said in his message.
TEMPLE DISPUTE SPARKS GENDER EQUALITY DEBATE IN INDIA
The decision of India’s top court to allow women of reproductive age to enter a Hindu temple in Kerala has snowballed into massive street protests and started a debate on gender inequality in other religions including Christianity and Islam.
Thousands of Hindus, mostly women, continue to protest on the streets of the southern state against allowing women aged 10-50 to enter the 12th century Sabarimala, a popular hilltop temple. The Supreme Court in its Sept. 28 ruling said “the attribute of devotion to divinity cannot be subjected to the rigidity and stereotypes of gender.” The ban was an expression of gender discrimination, it said.
Christian groups, which together form some 18% of Kerala’s 33 million people, have not taken any stand in the dispute.
Father Varghese Vallikkatt, spokesman for the regional bishops’ council, said there was no need for the church to intervene. “The Hindus protesting for their faith are enlightened enough to resolve the issue,” he told ucanews.com.
However, Hindu leaders like Rahul Easwar believe the top court’s verdict sets a precedent for the court to interfere with the faith issues of other religions such as Christianity and Islam.
“There is absolute discrimination in the church that women cannot do what men do. Women are endowed with the ability to reproduce and thus they are treated as unclean,” said Virginia Saldana, a theologian in Mumbai.
She told ucanews.com that Vatican II had “removed this idea of women as unclean, but still they are not given their due share in the church.”
There is a custom among Christian women in India to abstain from entering a church for 40 days after giving birth.
“Though I visited church after my delivery, my parents and seniors strictly asked me not to step inside the church and pollute it. I had to follow them,” said Christian activist Philomina Joseph.
In some Catholic Churches, nuns and women distribute communion but are not allowed to enter the area of the altar.
According to Holy Spirit nun Sister Lizy Thomas, based in Madhya Pradesh State, the problem rests with the mindset and perception of men, which keeps away women, including nuns, from leadership positions in the church.
“Generally, men tend to treat women as inferior and until and unless it is changed, gender equality is a mirage in the Catholic Church,” she said.
Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, a women’s leader and theologian based in Mumbai, said women in the Catholic Church have been asking for gender equality for ages.
Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur said: “The Catholic Church is all in favour of the maximum participation of women in all activities of the church except the ordination of women.”
ENDING INDIA’S GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR CATHOLICS
Benny D’Souza remembers good past times at Christmas when he enjoyed a week of sumptuous meals and quality time in India’s western Pune city with a local Christian Mascarenhas family that traces its roots to Portuguese missionaries.
“We were poor and the parish organized that I have lunch and spend the evening with the Mascarenhas family, and come home for the night,” said D’Souza, 55, father of a son and daughter.
“The daily visits for a week made me feel on top of the world.”
The help came as part of the Small Christian Community (SCC) activities of the Immaculate Conception Church in Poona Diocese. Poona is the former name of Pune.
The growth of such communities across India helps narrow a rich-poor divide, and caste-based discrimination, in hundreds of village parishes, a group of Indian bishops recently explained.
For example, Archbishop Anil Joseph Couto of Delhi noted that in Poona Diocese rich and influential people mingle with others who are poor and not so well educated.
Archbishop Couto was among 41 bishops and four archbishops, who met on Sept. 17-20 for a bishops’ colloquium on Small Christian Communities. The theme was: ‘Bishops are builders of communities to re-vitalize the Church.’
The bishops met and interacted with families and various groups in several parishes of the diocese.
A CHRISTIAN DOCTOR ARRESTED FOR ‘FORCED CONVERSION’ OF A CHILD
A Christian veterinary surgeon was arrested by the Jharkhand police on charges of forcibly converting a 13-year-old girl by offering her money. The arrest took place in Pakur on October 16, following the complaint filed by the child’s father the day before.
Speaking to AsiaNews Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), condemns “the arrest of the Christian, according to the Jharkhand Freedom of Religion Act [the anti-conversion law in force in the State, ed.]. We are suspicious of the arrest, given that recently Jharkhand is a hotbed of persecution against Christians.
The arrested person is called Dalu Soren and lives in the village of Sawanlapur. He is a cattle inspector in Chatarpur, in the Pakur district, and he also runs a school in his village. Some report that in the past he has already been accused of forced conversions against minors, and that is why he moved to the place where he resides.