More than 25,000 Christians repre-senting various denominations gathered at Udalguri town in Assam on March 14 to pray for peace and harmony in the nation. The meeting took place in the backdrop of the northeastern Indian state passing the controversial Assam Healing (Prevention of Evil) Practices Bill, 2024, and attacks on Christian institutions by certain groups ahead of the 2024 General Elections. Udalguri District’s Christian Coordination Committee organized the gathering at the Udalguri Nalbari Play Ground, some 115 km northeast of Guwahati, Assam’s main city. The event aimed to unite people from diverse backgrounds under the common goal of fostering peace and harmony. The 90-minute prayer was attended among denominations Baptists, Catholics, and Church of North India members. The gathering comprised people from different ethnic, linguistic communities of Assam such as Boro, Adivasi (commonly known as Tea Tribes), Santhal, Garos, Rabhas, Nepalis, and the Assamese.
The organizers claimed the spontaneous participation reflected people’s concern and anxiety regarding the need for justice and equal treatment of all citizens in the matters of faith, culture and practices. Reverend Susil Daimari, secretary of the Church Growth Department at BBC, in his message, stressed the urgent need for peace and harmony in the nation. The participants collectively prayed, focusing primarily on justice, peace and harmony across the nation. The prayers reflected the collective desire for a more unified and peaceful society, the organizers said.

As many as 500 Catholic women in the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar celebrated the International Women’s Day by pledging to foster women’s empowerment and gender equality through education. The women came to the March 10 event from various Mass centers of the Saint Vincent Cathedral Parish in the Odisha capital. The program began with Mass celebrated by Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar. The Divine Word prelate, in his homily, commended the wo-men for attending the program in significant numbers and said that if all women could embrace dignity, self-respect, and equa-lity in their daily lives, there would be no need to observe Women’s Day on a specific date.
The archbishop wanted the empowerment of all women within his archdiocese, encou-raging their active participation across all aspects of the Church and society. The event took place at Maa Velankini Mass Center in the Salia Sahi Slum of Bhubaneswar, which was set up as a temporary facility to accommodate the increasing number of Catholics, who came to the city following the 2008 anti-Christian violence in Kan-dhamal district. Sacred Heart’s Sister Sujata Jena, secretary to the Commission for Women of the Archdiocese, in her opening address said that the annual observation of women’s day would not make women equal. Only “conscious and regular” attempts by both men and women would help avoid people falling into the sin of patriarchy, she said and cited several in-stances where laws to prevent discrimination against women are being violated, despite the constitutional guarantee of equality.

Palm Sunday was celebrated with fervour among displaced Kukis in Manipur, the north-eastern Indian state that has been grappling with serious ethnic violence since last May.
In several places, churches were too small to contain everyone, forcing some worshippers to participate in the service outside. “Even in parishes where there are a large number of refugees – for example Don Bosco Parish in Churachandpur and St Mary’s Parish in Tuibong (Chura-chandpur), churches were packed for Psalm Sunday liturgi-cal services,” said Fr Varghese Velickakam, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Imphal and coordinator of the relief and rehabilitation committee. “The situation is slowly settling down,” Fr Velickakam told AsiaNews, as this day of celebration offered an important sign that things were getting back to normal.
“The refugees are already in the separate area,” the clergyman explained. “We are trying to rehabilitate them. Construction is going on. Support is coming from different parts of the country and from their own community.”

A Catholic bishop in Uttar Pradesh state on March 12 expressed relief after a court granted bail to a Catholic and 10 Protestants. “Finally, I am able to give you good news. The District Judge [in Barabanki] has granted bail to Father Dominic [Pinto] and all those who were arrested with him. Praise the Lord,” says a message from Bishop Gerald John Mathias of Lucknow.
The 11 were in judicial custody since February 6, a day after they were arrested for allegedly trying to convert poor Hindus in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Bishop Mathias thanked all those who prayed and made sacrifices for the bail. “So many people including bishops, priests, sisters, lay faithful, and youth have been praying. God has finally heard our prayers,” he added.
Besides Father Pinto, the court granted bail to Anil, Surju Prasad Gautam, Pawan Kumar, Sunil Pasi, Ghanshyam Gautam, Surendra Paswan, Rahul Paswan, Ramcharan Rawat, Dharmendra Kori and Suraj Gautham. On February 5, the police in Barabanki district arrested Father Pinto, 41, and others after some Hindu hardliners complained that they had conducted a mass religious conversion gathering at Navintha, the pastoral center of the Lucknow diocese. The following day, the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Barabanki, some 90 km northwest of Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state, remanded them in judicial custody.
Father Pinto, who was ordained a priest in in 2013, is the director of Navintha where some Protestant pastors and around 100 Khrist Bhakts (followers of Christ) attended their routine prayer meeting. The “Khrist Bhakts” are not converted to Christianity but follow the teachings of Christ. They were charged under the provisions of Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law and, if found guilty, they could be imprisoned for a maximum of 10 years.
Father Donald de Souza, chancellor and spokesperson of Lucknow diocese, dismissed the allegation of religious conversion and said Father Pinto had only given space to the Protestants to hold their program. Nobody was converted at the program or asked to become Christian, he explained. “Our people are arrested based on totally baseless charges,” Father de Souza told Matters India after the arrest. He pointed out that Father Pinto was not even attending the prayer gathering as it was a Protestant program. “Our priest only gave the building for their meeting.”
Persecution against Christians witnessed a sharp rise recently in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India. Father Pinto was among 39 Christians remanded in the first two months of this year in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly violating the state’s stringent anti-conversion law. Father Pinto’s bail application was postponed three times, the last being on March 1. The anti-conversion law stipulates that people should inform district authorities of their plan to change religion 30 days before the planned conversion ceremony. They also have to prove that he or she has not been forced or “lured” to change faith.

The Daughters of St Paul on March 22 concluded their 36-day program of spreading the message of Lent through Mother Mary’s perspective. “During lent we wanted to communicate the love of Jesus. Nothing else can demonstrate God’s love more powerfully than the cross where Jesus revealed the love of God. So, we decided to enact the Way of the Cross as the best way to convey this message,” said Sister Matilda Rose, who initiated the program.
The nuns, based in Mum-bai’s Bandra, the congregation’s Indian headquarters, formed a team and Sister Anna Kipuna-mai prepared the text of the “With Mary on the Way of the Cross.” Starting at St John the Baptist Church in Mumbai’s Marol, on February 16, the first Friday of Lent, the congregation staged the Way of the Cross in 12 parishes in Bombay archdiocese and the dioceses of Vasai and Nasik. It ended on the 40th day of the Lent, at Gonsalo Garcia parish in the diocese of Vasai.

More than 10,000 people turned up for the installation of the seventh archbishop of Ranchi, the mother diocese of India’s tribal Church. Jesuit Archbishop Felix Toppo, who retired as the Ranchi archbishop, on March 19 installed Archbishop Vincent Aind in the presence of Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli and Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta.

Jesuit Father Praveen Martis has been appointed the first vice chan-cellor of the newly created St. Aloy-sius Deemed University in Mangalu-ru. This was announced on March 19 by Jesuit Karnataka provincial Father Dionysius Vaz, the university chancellor, in the southwestern India city. Fr. Martis is a former principal of St. Aloysius College (Autono-mous).

The Lithuanian Embassy in New Delhi on March 22 organized a fun-ction to recall the services of a Jesuit priest who worked more than six de-cades among the poor in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
Jesuit Father Donatas Slapsys, born in Lithuania in 1921, came to India in 1950 and served the people of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra until his death in 2010.
Lithuanian ambassador Diana Mickeviciene welcomed the gathe-ring where Laurynas Kudijanovas made the presentation titled “Heritage and cultural memory of Lithuanian Jesuit missionary Fr. Donatas Slapsys in India.” Kudijanovas said most people in Ahmednagar area remem-ber him as a water-diviner as he had helped many to dig wells and bore-wells.

The Naga Baptist Christians of Oting village in India’s Nagaland state, not far from the international border with Myanmar, are now trying to come out of the worst period of darkness in their life.
Their village had courted ill fate and controversy on Dec. 4, 2021, when a botched-up military operation killed 14 coal mine workers, mistaking them for militants.

Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrao, archbishop of Goa and Daman, has hailed the Catholic religious men and women as a blessing since they rejuvenate the Church.
“You render service to the holiness of the Church. We need your prophetic voice and action. You can teach the entire church to walk the synodal path,” the cardinal told the general body meeting of the Goa unit of the Conference of Religious India.