Thousands of people were present when the Vatican raised an 18th century shrine in Mahe as a basilica, marking a historic milestone in Kerala’s northern region.
During a Mass on February 24, Bishop Varghese Chakkalakal of Calicut on February 24 announced that the Vatican has given the new status to St. Teresa’s Church in Mahe that comes under his Latin rite diocese.

Pope Francis on February 27 appointed Father Johannes Gorantla as the sixth bishop of Kurnool diocese in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
This appointment was made public at noon in Rome and its corresponding time in India on the bishop-elect’s 50th birthday.

Ho Ca Dau is taking catechism classes to be baptized into the Catholic Church after having helped persecute Christians for nearly a decade, treating them as enemies of communism.
The 27-year-old from the Bru-Van Kieu ethnic group believes his conversion is akin to that of St. Paul, who “persecuted Christians but fell to the ground on the way to Damascus and chose to follow Jesus.”
Dau was born into an atheist family in a village in the central province of Quang Tri. In the village, he treated Christians as a “reactionary force,” fighting against the communist government, he said.
His father, a soldier and Communist Party member, told him that religious forces such as Christianity abuse ethnic villagers and damage the government’s revolutionary causes.
“There is no God in the world and humans can do all things,” Dau recalls his father telling him.
Dau studied at a state-run boarding school where he joined the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, a socio-political organization that educates young people to be loyal communists.
After completing high school in 2015, he volunteered to serve as a militiaman to maintain social order and se-curity in the village.
He tried his best to get rewarded by his superiors by “following, snooping, and eavesdropping on people” who came to the village from other places. People came to trade in dried fish, sugar, milk, cooking oil, and clothes, besides supplying notebooks to the local people.
“I suspected them of illegally spreading Catholicism and Protestantism. I accused them of endangering social security,” he recalled.
In 2016, Dau got five of them arrested for “keeping crosses and copies of the Bibles in their bags.”
Dau believed the cross was an “evil” force and actively prevented local Catholics from gathering for prayers.
“One day I fainted because of hunger and was lying on the side of the road. A Catholic passer-by took me to the hospital and covered all my medical treatment costs,” he said.
“As he began mixing with the other Catholics, he became deeply interested in Catholi-cism,” Vinh said.

Christian Churches in Assam, northeastern India, have criticized the state government’s “misguided and misleading” statement equating healing with proselytization.
The Assam Christian Forum (ACF), an umbrella body of all Churches, has also rejected a radical Hindu group’s demand for the removal of Christian symbols from missionary schools in the state. The group, Kutumba Surakshya Parishad (Family Protection Council), alleged that missionaries use such symbols subtly to convert students from other faiths.
“The Assam Cabinet’s assertion that Christians engage in magical healing is misguided and misleading. Our numerous dispensaries and hospitals operate within the recognized medical frameworks, providing essential services to the sick,” ACF stated

Option for the poor and the marginalized is the only mission of the Syro-Malabar Church in India, asserted Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil while inaugurating the silver jubilee celebration of Belthangady diocese in Karnataka.
Belthangady is the first Syro-Malabar diocese in the southern Indian state, created in 1999, that caters to the migrated Catholics from Kerala. It is spread over in Dakshina Kannada, Kodagu, Chikmagaluru, and Shimoga districts.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, the first episcopal body in the world to study Artificial Intelligence (AI) seriously, has asked the country’s 174 dioceses to educate their more than 20 million members to responsibly use digital tools.

A Catholic nun has been remanded in judicial custody in connection with the death by suicide of a school girl in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.
A court in Ambikapur, a major city in Sarguja district, on February 7 remanded Carmelite Sister Mercy to jail after police charged her with abetting the suicide of the sixth grader the previous night.

The second day of the General Body Meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) on February 1 saw the participants the review the outcome of the Rome Synod on Synodality, Manipur crisis and situation of Christians across the country.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, who played a pivotal role in the Synod in Rome in October 2023, presented the theme, “The Fruits of the Synod on Synodality.” The cardinal, who is the archbishop of Bombay, described the synod as a renewed call of the Vatican I1, stressing the role and responsibility of God’s people in the Church.
He said that, on one of the synod’s innovations was “conversation in the Spirit,” a process that involved time to internalize discussions, fostering mature discernment and consensus.
Archbishop Linus Neli of Imphal, who addressed the present status of Manipur, ex-pressed immense gratitude for the spiritual and humanitarian assistance provided by bishops and NGOs to his strife-torn people.
He highlighted the demographic, historic, and ethnic aspects of Manipur, shedding light on the relief and rehabilitation efforts by the Catholic Church. He explained the devastating destruction of approximately 300 churches, and thousands of homes, the closure of numerous educational institutions, and the displacement of thousands of people.

The Church in India is facing unprecedented situation in the current socio-political scenario that threatens religious free-dom, says Archbishop Andrews Thazhath of Trichur, who was re-elected the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) for another two-year term.
“The religious freedom and justice guaranteed by the Con-stitution of India are at stake, and democracy is becoming a myth,” the archbishop told Matters India in an exclusive interview on February 7, the last day of the CBCI’s 36th bie-nnial general body meeting in Bengaluru.
He said attacks on Christian places of worship have now given way for physical attacks on priests and sisters with false allegations.
Archbishop Thazhath was reelected a day earlier, along with Archbishop George Anto-nysamy of Madras-Maylapore as Vice-President I, Bishop Joseph Mar Thomas of Bathery as Vice President II and Arch-bishop Anil Couto of Delhi as the Secretary-General. Father Jervis D’Souza will continue as the Deputy Secretary Gen-eral.
CBCI Office bearers: Arch-bishop Anil Couto of Delhi, secretary general, Archbishop George Antonysamy of Madras-Maylapore Vice-President I, Archbishop Thazhath, Bishop Joseph Mar Thomas of Bathery Vice President II and Fr Jervis D’Souza, Deputy Secretary GeneralReferring to attacks on Christians, Archbishop Thazha-th mentioned the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur and the arrest of a Catholic priest and Protestant pastors in Lucknow in the north.
Another Catholic priest was arrested recently in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, he said.

Increasing attacks and harassment on Christian institutions and personnel in India will not prevent the Church from serving the poor and downtrodden, assert the Catholic bishops in the country. “As loyal citizens of India, we will continue serving our country whatever be the cost, walking in the footsteps of Jesus our Master,” says the final statement of the 36th biennial meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI).
More than 170 bishops representing the country’s 174 dioceses attended the January 31-February 7 plenary at Bengaluru’s St John’s National Academy of Health Sciences, managed by the conference.
They addressed the theme, “The Church’s Response to the Current Socio-Political Situation of the Country and the Benefits and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI).”
The meeting has asked all dioceses in the country to observe March 22 as a day of prayer and fasting to seek God’s help to foster India’s democracy and social harmony.
The call comes a couple of months ahead of the general election in the country. The term of the current federal government will end in May.
While reviewing the current situation in India, the bishops noted the country’s “tremendous advances in the scientific, technological, economic and other fields” that have helped it emerge as an economic power.