Jesuit Archbishop Cyril Vasil, pontifical delegate for Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese, has met Pope Francis on his return to the Vatican after his 18-day stay in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
A press statement from the Media Commission of the Syro-Malabar Church says the Jesuit archbishop informed the Pope on August 23 about his visit to Kochi in Kerala and apprised him about the current situation in the Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly.
The August 24 press statement issued by commission secretary Vincentian Father Antony Vadakkekara says the delegate told the Pope that he had held discussions with the various groups in the archdiocese and provided necessary guidelines.
The Pope asked him to remain firm to implement the decisions taken by the Syro-Malabar Synod and approved by the pontiff, the statement adds.
Archbishop Vasil has also given a detailed report on the crises in the arch-diocese to Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, prefect of the Oriental Congregation.
The delegate said that he would continue his efforts to implement in the archdiocese the synod mode of celebrating Mass where the priest faces the altar during the main part.
Archbishop Vasil came to Kochi in Kerala, the headquarters of the Syro-Mala-bar Church, on August 4 and stayed there until August 22.
On his arrival, he announced that the Pope had sent him to make sure that the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese adopt the uniform mode, decided by the Syro-Malabar Synod.
Most Catholics and priests in the archdiocese – the largest in the Oriental Catholic Rite – oppose the synod Mass and insist on celebrating Eucharist where the priest faces the congregation.
The archdiocese has celebrated Mass in this way for more than 50 years, following the teachings of the Vatican II. However, six of 328 parishes in the archdiocese defied the delegate’s order to celebrate Mass in the synod way on August 20. He had also threatened to excommunicate priests who defied the August 17 order.

A Protestant pastor in a northern Indian state has been attacked for allegedly conducting religious conver-sions. Pastor Shyju Joseph was condu-cting Sunday worship on Aug. 6 at his place in Bihar state’s Nawada district. Members of the Bajrang Dal (brigade of Lord Hanuman), a Hindu nationalist organisation, disrupted the service after accusing him of conver-ting people to Christianity.

The elders of Vaishnavite commu-nity in Imphal have declared indefinite fast and prayer after taking moral responsibility for what they call the misdeeds of their immature youth.
The declaration came during the third visit of Archbishop Emeritus Thomas Menamparampil to the violence-torn northeastern Indian state.

The contribution of Jesuit Father Jerome D’Souza as one of the architects of the Indian Constitution was recalled at a function in Mangaluru, southern India.
Father D’Souza (1897-1977), a native of Mangaluru, was a member of India’s Constituent Assembly that met 1946-1950 in New Delhi to draft the country’s Constitution that came into effect on January 26, 1950.

The appointment of a Vatican re-presentative, who arrived to help find a solution to the lingering liturgical dispute in India’s eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church, has turned contro-versial after a section of Catholics maintained that his papal delegation itself is suspect.
Jesuit Archbishop Cyril Vasil of Slovakia arrived at the Church’s base in southern Kerala state on Aug. 4. But a group of Catholics in the Chur-ch’s Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdio-cese say his letter of appointment from the Vatican is not made available to the archdiocese, nor published anywhere.

The Catholic Church in Goa has distanced itself from a layman’s call to fellow Goans to unite or be doomed.
The call appeared in an article published in the August 1-15 edition of the “Renewal,” the bimonthly pastoral bulletin of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman.
The writer, F E Noronha, in his one-page article, titled “Goans need to Unite …or they will perish,” referred to politicians such as the state chief minister talking about destroying traces of Portuguese culture. Such announcements are part of a holocaust under preparation, he warned.
The Goa edition of The Times of India on August 5 carried a report with the headline, “Church bulletin article warns Manipur-like situation in Goa.”
Reacting to such reports, Father Barry Cardozo, director of the Diocesan Centre for Social Communications Media, asked the newspaper to publish a corrigendum, stating the Church’s stand on the matter.
“A section of the print media has recently carried a misleading report titled ‘Church predicts Manipur-like situation in Goa.’ We would like to state that the Church in Goa has never made such a statement. Statements made by an individual contributor to the pastoral bulletin of this Archdiocese have been made to appear as (official) statements of the Church. The pertinent newspaper has been asked to issue a corrigendum.”

Iran arrested scores of Christians, mostly converts from Islam but also some Assyrian-Chaldeans baptised as children, over a seven-week period in June and July in 11 different cities of the country, this according to Article18, a human rights organisation that advocates on behalf of Iranian Christians and religious freedom.
In an early report, the NGO had reported 50 arrests by mid-July in five cities, but its latest update indicates that at least 69 people were taken into custody, 10 of which – four men and six women – are still held by the authorities.
The arrests occurred between 1 June and 17 July in the following cities: Tehran, Karaj, Rasht, Orumiyeh, Aligoudarz, Isfahan, Shiraz, Semnan, Garmsar, Varamin, and Eslamshahr.
In the capital Tehran and the other cities, after their arrest, people were forced to sign statements pledging to refrain from Christian activities or undergo Islamic re-education in order to be released.
Some say that after their release they were summoned for further questioning, or were ordered to leave Iran. One said he lost his job at the request of intelligence agents. For those granted bail, families had to pay between US$ 8,000 and US$ 40,000.
The majority of those arrested are converts from Islam, but at least two are Iranian-Armenians, who were born into Christian families..
The wave of arrests among Christians also coincides with a new crackdown on Iran’s Baha’i community, which, along with Christian converts, is a minority religious group not recognised by the Islamic Republic.

The Indian Christian community in the Tri-state area organized a vigil in front of the United Nations to pray for peace and justice in Manipur where ethnic clashes have raged since May 3.
The participants of the August 5 program prayed for good sense to come to the perpetrators of the violence and for the authorities to have the courage to reign in the continuing attacks on the Kuki-Zo tribal people, mostly Christians, in the northeastern Indian state.
The vigil, attended by more than 700 people, expressed solidarity with the grieving people of Manipur. “Prayers by the clergy reflected the deep pain felt across the Indian Christian Community in the United States for the great calamity that befell Manipur with tremendous loss of human lives and destruction of homes and churches,” says a press statement from the Federation of Indian American Christians of North America (FIACONA), one of the organizers.
“This is not a protest rally. We aim not to examine why the riots happened, who is responsible, or politics. We are here today to pray for the rule of law in Manipur, and obviously, there are limits as to what we can do to help. However, Prayer does not have any limitations,” said FIACONA president Koshy George.

In Hong Kong, the authorities have ordered another crackdown against pro-democracy activists and civil liberties advocates under the infamous national security law, Beijing imposed in 2020.
As part of this, police yesterday arrested 10 people for allegedly violating the draconian law in connection with a humanitarian relief fund. Card Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, Hong Kong’s bishop emeritus, was also detained because of his involvement with the fund, which disbanded two years ago.
In an operation, a prominent Catholic leader was also arrested. According to the Hong Kong Free Press (HHKFP) newspaper, six men and four women were taken into custody, including Bobo Yip, former chairwoman of the diocese’s Justice and Peace Commission.
Following the arrest, police took Yip to a Catholic bookstore in the Yau Ma Tei neighbourhood to gather evidence against her, seizing two computers.Charges against the 10 were mentioned in Card Zen’s trial, who was formally accused of failing to register the fund; If convicted, the 10 face a long prison sentence, up to life imprisonment.

Indian Christians observed what has become an annual “Black Day” protest on Aug. 10 as a vital panel readies to submit a report on granting reservation status under India’s affirmative action policy to Christian and Muslim Dalits.
Protest marches, rallies, and debates were held across the country as different Christian denominations sought scheduled caste status to avail reservation benefits in jobs and educational institutions for Dalit Christians who form 75 percent of India’s 25 million Christian population.
In New Delhi, members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), National Council of Churches in India, and National Council of Dalit Christians observed a “silent protest” outside the Sacred Heart Cathedral after permission was denied to hold it at the Jantar Mandar, a place earmarked for protests in the national capital.
Dalit Christians began observing Aug. 10 as a “Black Day” in 2009 and the protest has grown to include all Christian denominations in recent years.The observance is to protest against a 1950 presidential decree issued on Aug. 10 which denied reservation benefits to downtrodden people who left Hinduism for other religions.
The government, headed by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, issued the decree to prevent the mass exodus of Dalits from caste-ridden Hinduism to other egalitarian and progressive religions like Christianity and Islam. Under Hinduism, the caste system is a “divinely sanctioned” social order where one’s social status is determined by a hereditary vocation.
Dalits are on the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system and are destined to toil for the benefit of upper castes. They currently make up more than 25 percent of India’s 1.4 billion inhabitants.The term Dalits was used as a translation by the British Raj for the first time during a census classification of “depressed classes.”