A Catholic nun, who survived gangrape, has gone back to a court to give evidence after a gap of nine years.
The nun, who cannot be named because of legal reasons, appeared before the district and sessions judge court in Cuttack on August 16 and 17 to give evidence against 18 accused in the case.
However, her evidence could not be recorded as the Odisha government had not yet appointed a lawyer for her.
The court is expected to fix another date for recording her statements after the government appoints the lawyer.
The nun was 25 when she was gang-raped on August 25, 2008, after a mob ransacked and attacked Divya Jyoti (Divine Light) Pastoral Centre, one of the torched church institutions, where she served as a social worker. She had taken her final vows only a few months before.
The violence began August 24, 2008, a day after the murder of Hindu religious leader Laxmanananda Saraswati, and lasted four more months. The mayhem claimed more than 100 lives and reduced 395 churches and other places of worship to ashes. Nearly 56,000 people ended up displaced and destitute.

Just four days after a mob of Islamist extremists burned down a Christian community in the Pakistani city of Jaran-wala, over 700 Catholics ga-thered to celebrate Mass out-side the decimated St. Paul Catholic Church on Aug. 20.
Despite the incredible de-vastation and widespread fears that another anti-Christian riot would break out, hundreds of Catholics turned to the Eu-charist following a mob attack that destroyed more than 30 churches and 800 homes.
“Most of the people were crying in the Mass,” one Chri-stian community leader told the Catholic relief group Aid to the Church in Need Interna-tional (ACN).
“It was a very painful time but a chance to share with one another their sense of loss and sadness,” said the Christian, who was not identified by ACN out of safety concerns.
What happened? On Aug. 16, a riot of hundreds of Mus-lims – reported by some as thousands – broke out in the Christian portion of Jaranwala in Pakistan’s northeastern Punjab province.
The anti-Christian mob had broken into a frenzy after two Christians, Rocky Masih and Raja Masih, were accused of profaning the Quran and insu-lting Islam. Disrespecting the Quran is a crime punishable by life in prison in Pakistan.
Before a formal police in-vestigation could begin, a crowd of Muslims, reportedly spurred on by an extremist group called “Tehreek-e-Labbaik” went on a rampage through the Christian district.

World Youth Day is a “unique experience” that allows people to get to know others from all over the world. Above all it favours relations between people of nations, often in conflict with each other.
This is the case for Indian and Pakistani Catholics, says Godfrey Malu, who hails from the Archdiocese of Bombay (Mumbai). So far, during his stay in Lisbon, he “met some young Pakistanis” who were “really happy to meet us”.
“We Indians and Pakistanis got together and took pictures,” he told AsiaNews, “showing that we are one body” of the Church. “Although we come from different nations (both nuclear powers), we are one,” he added. This enables us to “live a unique moment and reach out to one another.”
The young Catholics from Pakistan and India are but some of the million-strong sea of young people from around the world, meeting from 2 to 6 August in Lisbon, after heeding Pope Francis’s call to take part in the 37th World Youth Day.
Since his first meeting with Portuguese authorities, the pontiff has renewed his appeal for peace and the search for new ways of coming together and engaging in dialogue, even where walls and war keep people apart.

The head of the Catholic Church in India on August 23 joined the nation’s leaders to applaud the Indian Space Research Organization for the success of the country’s third lunar exploration mission.
On the same day, when Chandrayaan (moon craft)-3 successfully landed on the lunar surface, India created history as the first country to land on the moon’s South Pole.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Indians and space scientists for the achievement. “India will remember this day forever,” Modi said after virtually witnessing the landing attempt from South Africa where he is attending the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Summit.
“I heartily congratulate ISRO, its scientists for this unprecedented feat. I may be in South Africa but my heart has always been with the Chandrayaan mission,” he added.
“No other country has been able to land on this side of the moon before; this will change all narratives and stories about the moon. We are witness to the new flight of new India. New history has been written,” the prime minister said.
Archbishop Andrews Thazhath of Trichur, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, conveyed to the ISRO the “warmest congratulations” from the entire nation on the remarkable achievement of the successful landing of Chandrayaan 3 on the lunar surface.

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.”