A Catholic bishop in sou-thern Indian Kerala state has accused its communists-led go-vernment of inaction after 12 people were killed in wild ani-mal attacks in the past two months. “The [Kerala] state government is not doing enough to restrict wild animals in the forest,” said Bishop John Nelli-kunnel of Idukki diocese in the state. Nellikunnel also joined a protest march convened by the All Kerala Catholic Congress, a laity organization of the Syro-Malabar Church, in Idukki district on March 4. Some 22% of this northern district’s esti-mated one million people are Christians, mostly members of the Eastern rite Church based in Kerala. The farmers want the government to protect their lives and livelihoods from rising attacks by wild animals, parti-cularly elephants, which enter human habitats seeking water and food as forest resources dry up in the four-month-long su-mmer starting in February. “A vast majority of the people living in the periphery of the forests are living in fear, and the government should find a permanent solution to this seri-ous problem,” the prelate said. Nellikunnel said the govern-ment has been ignoring the des-perate pleas of the farmers for years on the pretext of protect-ing wildlife and the environ-ment. “The government should ensure no life is lost due to the human-animal conflict anymo-re,” he said. Nellikunnel said if the government failed to act with urgency, “the diocese will join the farmers in more such protests until their safety is ensured.”

Christians in a northern Indian state where they face increased persecution have urged police to protect them and their churches as they begin the seven-week-long Lent season of prayers and fasting. “We have sought police protection as we fear possible attacks from miscreants during Lenten season,” said Pastor Jitendra Singh, president of United Christian Committee of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state. The ecumenical body submitted a memorandum to the city’s police commissioner on March 1. The Lent season begins on Ash Wednesday, March 5, and culminates at the Easter Vigil on April 19. “We have in the past witnessed attacks on Christians during Lenten prayer services and don’t want a repeat of the same this year,” Singh told on March 4. Uttar Pradesh, which is governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, has seen a rise in attacks against Christians and their institutions in the past few years. “Our prayer gatherings are falsely portrayed as religious conversion activity to target us,” Singh lamented. Even house prayers are attacked by Hindu activists in many places across Uttar Pradesh, and Christians, including pastors, are arrested under false charges of conversion, he added. Currently, close to 100 Christians are languishing in different jails in the state after they were accused of violating the provisions of the draconian anti-conversion law that criminalizes religious conversion through fraudulent means. The state has the most rigorous anti-conversion law that has a provision for life imprisonment or 20 years in prison if found guilty of being involved in religious conversion activities.

Father Gregory Pereira, a priest of Mangalore diocese in southern India, is called different names in parishes he has served. In Bantwal, he was “Papaya Father,” and in Narampady, “Kumbalakai Father.” In Talapady where he now serves, he is “Dragon Father.” The parishioners have given him such titles as an honour for turning their parishes into “green belts’ with organic farming, beginning from the church land to every house in the parish. “For me, farming is a spiritual exercise, a path to promote a pastoral ministry with a green commitment,” said Father Pereira.

Mithra G Augustine, a former pri-ncipal of Madras Christian College and director of the Ecumenical Chri-stian Centre, has died in Chennai. He was 95. The death occurred in the early hours of February 18 at a Chennai hospital. Mithra was born on June 25, 1930, at Guntur in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. He was attached with MCC in various capacities, first as a student, then warden of Bishop Heber Hall, professor and head of the Department of Zoology, eventually becoming the principal. After retiring from MCC, he joined the ecumenical centre in Bengaluru as its director in 1990 and held the post for 7 years.

Montfort Brother Varghese Theckanath is on a journey to make the voice of the voice-less heard in the main stream socie-ty. “Many interest-ing things happen among them, but only when a misfortune happens, their stories are reported,” bemoans Brother Theckanath, a grassroots activist promoting the rights of the urban poor. As a solution, the 67-year-old Brother has set up a sound and visual studio at Montfort Social Institute (MSI) at Ramanathapuram, Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad. The institute, affiliated to the Earth Charter Initiative, is a resource and training centre for the promotion of Human Rights Edu-cation and Sustainable Development Education. “I want to train about 100 youth from the families of migrants, domestic workers, street dwellers so that they can express their achieve-ments and grievances first hand,” Brother Theckanath, who had served as the Central India provincial of the Montfort Brothers of St Gabriel for six years, told.

In what is billed as a first in history, India’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal seeking to end discrimination against socially poor Dalit Catholics in a parish in southern India. The case came to the nation’s top court after the High Court of the Tamil Nadu state dismissed a petition of some Catholics of Kottapalayam parish in Kumbakonam diocese seeking its intervention to end the alleged caste-based discrimination in the parish. The Madurai bench of the state High Court dismissed the petition, saying the appeal was “not only superfluous” but also the court had no “jurisdiction” over the issue. The petition wanted the court to order to end discriminatory practices in the parish, which included maintaining two cemeteries in the parish – one for the upper caste people and the other for Dalit people – among several other such practices. The petitioners challenged the state court’s dismissal in the Supreme Court, which, following a preliminary hearing on Feb. 21, accepted the case for hearing and ordered to seek responses from the respondents. The respondents include 17 individuals and offices, which include heads of regional and national bishops’ forums, the local bishop, the archbishop, and district and state officials of departments meant to protect the interests of people of lower caste origin. Lawyer Franklin Caesar Thomas, who appeared for petitioners, said the Supreme Court’s accepting a petition of Dalit Catholics against discrimination within the Church “is first in the history of India.” Thomas said Dalit Catholics in Kumbakonam diocese face inhuman caste-based discrimination, including “untouchability and aggression” from the high caste community. The petitioners in the appeal said they had sought the help of district and state authorities to end the practice but “no proper or complete action was taken by any of the authorities.” Thomas told that the parish has 150 Dalit Catholic families, but the parish does not take their contributions nor involve them in church activities and celebrations. Thomas said the upper caste believe Dalit Catholics’ contributions could “pollute them and their entire celebrations.”

Police have arrested nine Christians in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh for holding Sunday prayer meetings, which Hindu groups alleged were meant to convert local Hindus. The arrests were made in identical cases reported from two places on Feb. 23. Five people, including a pastor and three women, were arrested in Sitapur district while four others including a pastor were arrested in Raebareli district, said local media reports. The arrested Christians had gathered for regular Sunday prayers insides houses when Hindu mobs barged in and alleged they were defaming the Hindu religion and its deities and offering inducements to convert people.
The police seized religious materials including copies of the Holy Bible as evidence of conversion activities, media reports said. “They were later remanded in judicial custody,” said a Church leader who is assisting the arrested Christians. The leader who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals said the police action was based on “mere allegations from right-wing Hindu activists and without any evidence.” “It has now become very dangerous for Christians to hold prayer gatherings in their homes,” he told on Feb. 24. The arrested Christians were charged under the strict provisions of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act 2021.

Several schools in central India, some of them Church-managed, averted a crisis when students began to pay tuition fees, which they had stopped on allegations that these schools collected excessive fees in the past.
“We have been struggling to pay the salary to our teachers as many parents refused to pay the fees of their children this year,” said Father Thankachan Jose, who is dealing with the court cases of his Jabalpur diocese in Madhya Pradesh state.
The parents had stopped paying school fees to their children in 11 schools, most of them Christian-run, accusing them of collecting excess fees in the previous six academic years. The parents also filed 20 petitions seeking the inter-vention of the High Court, the top court in the state, to get the alleged excess money collected refunded to them.
Christian leaders say the allegation stems from an anti-Christian atmosphere in the state, where the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party runs the government. “We are relieved now after parents began to pay the tuition fees after court, through its interim order, took a clear stand, Jose told.
He told on Feb. 20 that the differing parents began to pay fees following a Feb. 13 High Court order that asked parents to clear all fee dues to the respective schools within one month.
The court said if the parents fail to pay fees, schools are allowed to withhold the annual results of the students.

Christians in a northeastern Indian state staged a day-long hunger strike on Feb. 17 against the government’s move to impose an anti-conversion law, which they say is unconstitu-tional and anti-Christian.
The Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act (APFRA) was introduced in 1978 to protect the traditional religious practices of indigenous communities from external influence or coercion. But it remained dormant for over 45 years as successive governments failed to frame the rules.
On Sept. 30 last year, the Gauhati High Court’s perma-nent bench in Arunachal Pra-desh’s capital Itanagar asked the state government to finalize the rules within six months. The directive came after a public interest litigation by a citizen against the government’s failure to enforce the law. Chief Mini-ster Pema Khandu on Feb. 15 said the rules being framed as per the court directive were not against any religion, but “to give some more protection to indigenous faiths.”
The Arunachal Christian Forum (ACF) said that “the draconian law is against the secular constitution of our country and is anti-Christian.” “It violates the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion,” ACF President Tara Miri told on Feb. 18.The ACF, a multi-denominational body that organized the hunger strike in Itanagar, said Christians also held protests, across the state’s 29 districts throughout the week. “There are 46 Christian denominations in the state and their members organized their own protest marches, prayers and fasting programs at their respective places,” Miri said.

A two-day meeting in Goa has reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to migrant care and advocacy, urging dioceses and religious congregations to become protagonists of change in fostering a more inclusive and compassionate society. “The members of the Church must become signs of hope for migrants, the elderly, the sick, and all those in need, especially those in vulnerable situations and on the peri-pheries,” said Cardinal Philip Neri Ferrao, Archbishop of Goa and Daman and presi-dent of both the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences and the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI).The cardinal was speaking at the February 20-21 gathering of diocesan secretaries of the Commission for Migrants from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, organized by the CCBI Commission for Migrants at Shanti Sadan Pastoral Centre, Old Goa. He reminded the Church of its mission, especially in this Jubilee Year, to be a source of hope. He referenced Pope Francis’ Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee Year, emphasizing the Church’s call to accompany and uplift those in distress. Highlighting the lives of Saints Francis Xavier and Joseph Vaz, Cardinal Ferrao described them as models of relationship-building, which he called the foundation of pastoral care for migrants and other vulnerable groups. “Caring and empowerment happen through relation-ships,” he stressed.