A Catholic bishop is the first religious leader to join community efforts dealing with water shortages in Jhabua district in the central Indian State of Madhya Pradesh. Bishop Basil Bhuria of Jhabua, four priests and nearly 80 Catholic community members worked on Hathipava Hill May 21 to fill hundreds of pits prepared for planting saplings with black soil. The prelate was respond-ing to a call for religious leaders by police superintendent Mahesh Chandra Jain in Jhabua district to support community efforts to tackle water shortages.

“People in many villages in my diocese have to walk several kilometres to fetch water during summer. It is difficult for people to source enough water to drink, for agriculture, cattle and other needs,” Bishop Bhuria said.

Two Missionaries of Charity nuns, who celebrated 25 years of religious life, say serving the poorest of the poor continues to thrill them.

“I find real peace and joy in serving the downtrodden and under privileged following the footsteps of our founder, Saint Teresa of Kolkata,” Sister Selena Toppo, one of the nuns, told Matters India after the jubilee Mass on May 20 in Bhubaneswar, capital of Odisha State in eastern India.

Both the nuns expressed gratitude to God for accompanying them in their religious life.

Suspected Hindu nationali-sts in Tamil Nadu burned down a church and the home of its pastor after some high “caste” Hindus converted to Christia-nity and joined the church.

Pastor John Muller and his pregnant wife were out when their home and adjoining church were set ablaze May 3 in Attipattu village in Cuddalore District.

“Recently, some villagers belonging to Vanniyar, a caste-based Hindu sect, came to Christ,” Pastor Muller was quoted as saying.

“The same caste group opposes conversions in the village because they treat Christianity as a religion of lower castes. They don’t want anyone from Vanniyar to convert to Christianity,” he added.

The pastor said that he had been threatened by five people three days earlier who asked him to “get out of this area, or we will see your end.”

However, no arrests have been made in the case.

Human rights abuses against India’s social and religious minorities have been on the ascendance since the BJP government came to power.

This grim reality is already being acknowledged within India as well as internationally, says the Alliance for Justice and Accountability (AJA) of the United States.

The AJA report launched in Washington DC came nearly two months after the United States Commission on Inter-national Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) declared that religious freedom in India was at stake.

At the launch of the latest report the panellists such as Jennifer Prestholdt (Deputy Director, The Advocates for Human Rights), veteran journa-list Kannan Srinivasan, and Ajit Sahi (Advocacy Director, Indi-an American Muslim Council) briefed the press.

AJA talks about the inability of Indian government in dealing with the anti-minority violence and said that “government action seem to actually protect the perpetrators.” It said, “The Government of India has not demonstrated a sense of urgency to adequately investigate and effectively prosecute perpetra-tors of human rights violations against members of minority groups,” the report said.

Guwahati: A Darjeeling hills Mukhia tribal scholar presented his doctoral study on the impact of Christianity on his fellow hills tribal commu-nities of Lepcha and Tamang at Assam Don Bosco University Guwahati, 18 May 2017.

The Ph.D. thesis by Assistant Professor at Salesian College Sonada Mr Terence Mukhia is entitled “Impact of Christianity on the Lepcha and Tamang Tribal Communities in the Darjeeling District (1841-2017): A Philosophical Pers-pective.”

The research was under-taken at Assam Don Bosco University under the super-vision of Salesian Father Dr. Mathew George of Kolkata.

The four year long research was funded by Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi from where the research scholar, Terence Mukhia, passed Junior Re-search Fellowship (JRF).

The thrust of the thesis says Mukhia, “is on the impact of Christianity on the Lepcha and Tamang tribal communities in the Darjeeling District from a philosophical perspective.”

An era in journa-lism, especially in the Catholic Church, came to an end when Fr George Veliparambil, former Managing Editor of the Kerala Times and president of the Indian Catholic Press Association (ICPA), died on May 15.

According to reports and obituary write ups, Father Veliparambil was on the forefront in modernizing Malayalam language and journalistic style of reporting and writing. As Kerala Times Managing Editor, he revived ‘Satya Nadam’ (True Voice), one of the oldest periodicals in Malayalam.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said he will take up with Prime Minister Narendra Modi the issue of kidnapped Kerala Catholic priest Tom Uzhunnallil, who is at an undisclosed location in Yemen. Vijayan was replying in the Kerala Assembly to a motion moved by former State Finance Minister K.M. Mani, who accused the state government of doing nothing to bring back the kidnapped priest.

Pope Francis on May 20 appointed Fr Nazarene Soosai as the new bishop of Kottar diocese that covers the southernmost region of mainland India. The 54-year-old priest replaces Bishop Peter Remigius, who turned 78 on the same day. He did his philosophical and theological studies from Sacred Heart Seminary in Poonamallee, Chennai and was ordained a priest for Kottar on April 2, 1989.