An Indian will now handle the funds of the worldwide Society of Jesus, the second largest Catholic religious congregation for men after the Salesians.
Jesuit superior general Father Arturo Sosa on March 28 announced the name of Father Sebastian J Jeerakassery, a former head of the congregation’s Delhi province. He will assume office from April 1, according to the Jesuits’ global website.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court on April 13 granted bail to a Catholic school principal accused of sexual abuse of student.
A day earlier, the court granted temporary relief from arrest to Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur and Father Jagan Raj in an alleged cheating case.
The high court’s principle bench in Jabalpur granted bail to Nam Singh Yadav, a layman principal of a school the Jabalpur diocese managed at Junwani, a village in Dindori district in the central Indian state.
The court also ordered for a probe into the charges against the principal after he denied the allegations against him.

The pro-Hindu government in a central Indian state has agreed to provide police protection during Holy Week to churches in a diocese where Christians face hostility from Hindu nationalist groups.
“We will provide adequate security for churches in the Jhabua diocese during the Holy Week,” said Agam Jain, superintendent of police, the top cop in the tribal-dominated Jhabua district in Madhya Pradesh ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In a rare and significant gesture for India, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Delhi on the occasion of Easter 2023. Modi – welcomed by Archbishop Anil Joseph Thomas Couto – spoke to the faithful; he also lit a candle in front of the image of the Risen Christ and planted a tree in the garden of the complex. It was the premier himself who gave wide coverage to the visit, releasing pictures and a short video.
Earlier in the morning Modi had already posted greetings to Christians on Easter Day with a Tweet on his profile. In the text he expressed the hope that “this special occasion will deepen the spirit of harmony in our society. May it inspire people to serve society and help the marginalized. On this day let us remember the pious thoughts of Christ.” Modi’s visit was welcomed by the Archdiocese of Delhi. In a statement reported by India’s official Ani news agency, cathedral pastor Father Francis Swaminathan called it “a great message.”
Observers of Indian politics have linked the gesture to the slogan “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas,” launched by the premier ahead of the 2024 elections: a call for cooperation among the different communities in India, a country where unfortunately confessional divisions fueled by Hindu nationalists often make headlines.
In recent days Modi had had a meeting in Delhi with Baselios Marthoma Mathews III, the leader of the Malankara Orthodox Church, a Syriac rite. The prelate also extended an invitation to him to visit his seat in Kottayam in Kerala.
“We are happy with the messages about cooperation between the communities,” Baselios Mathews III had commented, “but at the same time we have problems in different regions, attacks against Christian churches. And these facts are a reality that needs to be addressed.” Kerala, too, some prominent BJP leaders visited churches on Easter Day. It was a gesture that the local opposition leade linked back to the election campaign, calling it opportunistic and recalling how – on the contrary – just these days a minister from the same party said that Christians who visit other people’s homes “to effect conversions” should be beaten.
Speaking to AsiaNews, Father Paul Thelakat, former spokesman of the Syro-Malabar Church, commented, “I welcome Prime Minister N. Modi’s visit to Delhi’s Sacred Heart Cathedral on Easter Day.”

An Indian American who wrote about pioneering American and Indian women in a Bihar town has won a 74-year-old award that salutes media that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”
Jyoti Thottam, daughter of an Indian nurse settled in the United States, has won the Christopher Award for her book, “Sisters of Mokama: The Pioneering Women Who Brought Hope and Healing to In-dia.”
Thottam, a senior New York Times Opinion editor, wrote about Americans and Indians – like her mother – who cared for all who came to their hospital in Mokama, a town some 100 km southeast of Patna, the Bihar capital, during the tumultuous period after WWII and the Partition of India.
Her mother, born in 1946 in the southern Indian state of Kerala, left home at the age of 15 and traveled to Bihar, which was among the bloodiest regions of Partition, to study nursing at Mokama’s Nazareth Hospital.
Fascinated by her mother’s story, Thottam set out to dis-cover the full story of Nazareth Hospital, which had been established in 1947 by the six Sisters of Charity of Nazareth nuns.
With no knowledge of Hindi, and the awareness that they would likely never see their families again, the sisters had traveled to Mokama. They opened the hospital a year later and soon began recruiting young Indian women as nursing students.

A Salesian center in north-eastern India has held a series of training to help improve their employment opportunities.
The Anma Integrated Development Association (AIDA) held the training in five villages, with a focus on mushroom cultivation and food processing. The women were part of self-help groups facilitated by the Don Bosco Campus in Dimapur, the commercial capital of Nagaland state.
The training aimed to pro-vide skills training for unemployed youth and women. Self-help groups are set up to help women have better employment opportunities. Women attended hands-on training and had a chance to meet with different organizations and departments for cross-sharing of information in a real-work environment.
The mushroom cultivation training was held at the Mush-room Farmers’ Club in Bade village. It was supported by the Mushroom Development Foundation of Guwahati, Assam. The food processing training on meat and pickles was held at the Ministry Learning Center.
The 50 participants of the mushroom training were taught about the construction of the mushroom house, preparation of straw, incubation and spawning and casing soil. The 27 participants in the food processing training learned about food quality assurance, quality control, and preservation for meat and pickles.
“Salesian missionaries in India and around the globe provide educational programs for women so they can find employment and become self-sufficient, which aids their families and communities,” said Father Timothy Ploch, interim director of Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco.

In a display of unabashed syncretism, significant numbers of Catholics are offering flowers, coconuts, fruits, rice, milk, sweetmeats and incense sticks to the idols of Shantadurga Kunkalikarin, a Hindu deity also known as Durga, the goddess of destruction.
“There is a lot of involvement of Catholics. I would say about 30–40%,” said Wendy Gomes, trustee of the Cuncolim Chieftains Memorial Trust told The Times of India, detailing Catholic participation in the “umbrella” festival of Sontrio (Chatrotsav) held earlier in March.
The devotees carry a red “sacred” umbrella representing the goddess and a dozen white umbrellas for each of the 12 local clans. Dancing while carrying the umbrellas, the red-powder-smeared participants toss handfuls of powder in the air around the goddess Shantadurga’s silver palanquin.
“We have two mothers, one is Shantadurga and the other is Saude Saibinn [Our Lady of Health],” Alister D’Souza, a local Catholic, told the Indian newspaper. The local parish of Our Lady of Health was first built between 1600 and 1604.
The Goan church’s website puts the number of Catholics in the parish of Our Lady of Health at 10,000. The Franciscan Order of Friars Minor and the religious sisters of Maria Bambina are also located in the parish.
Retired superintendent of police, Tony Fernandes, narrates how he has always taken part in the festival as a Catholic: “We were originally Hindus and were converted (to Catholicism), so the belief (in Shantadurga) has always been strong.”
As the deity’s procession stops at designated places along the route, Catholics join Hindus in throwing vermillion powder and rose petals. They rush forward to the idol to make offerings and seek the goddess’ blessing.
In the predominantly Catholic ward of Gotton, where the procession makes a ritual stop, Catholics don’t even store meat in their refrigerators as a mark of respect to the goddess.
Prominent Catholic Neeraj Aguiar from Gotton insists that local Catholics have celebrated the goddess’s arrival since “time immemorial” and “with great pomp.” The Aguiars have even built a special concrete platform to rest the palanquin and allow people to worship the goddess. “It is our belief that Shantadurga Kunkalikarin is the patron of Cuncolim. We have strong faith in that,” says Aguiar. “It’s not about being a Hindu or Catholic. We celebrate this together.”

A Catholic school in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has been sealed and its principal arrested after an investigation team found objectionable materials in the pre-mises.
A Church official in the state, who refused to be identified, told Matters India March 27 that efforts are on to get bail for the priest. He also said only the priests’ residence inside the school campus has been sealed. Earlier, a report in the Free Press Journal said the collector of Morena district ordered the closure of Saint Mary’s School in the town after a surprise inspection by the state’s Child Protection Commission along with District Education Officer and the police.

Church leaders in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Mo-di’s home state have demanded strict legal action in a case of hate speech circulating on so-cial media insulting the pope and Catholic nuns.
Archbishop Thomas Igna-tius Macwan of Gandhinagar in western Gujarat state on March 21 wrote to Chief Mi-nister Bhupendra Patel to take “immediate and stringent” act-ion against a speaker, who is yet to be identified, and organi-zers of the event where defa-matory statements were made against the supreme leader of the Catholic Church.
A video of the event has been circulating on social media for the past few days and contains provocative sta-tements against local Christians and a Catholic pilgrimage cen-ter called Unteshwari Mata Mandir in Kadi village.
“We do not know the name of the speaker. But from the podium and background of the stage, it is clear that he was speaking at a Vishwa Hindu Parishad [World Hindu Coun-cil] function in Kadi, Mehsana district, north-western Guj-arat,” said Father Telesphoro Fernandes, secretary of Gujarat Education Board of Catholic Institutions.
The speech in the local Gujarati language makes sex-ually explicit references to the pope and nuns and calls on the crowd to not tolerate Christian priests and nuns in their midst.
He said the pope is the hus-band of thousands of nuns the world over because nuns during their initiation ceremony need to accept him so. Therefore, the pope is committing adul-tery, he said.

Church leaders in India have reacted cautiously to the demand of an organization representing indigenous people that the government remove the reservation for tribal people to Christianity or other religions.
A March 26 rally organized by the Janajati Dharma Sans-kriti Suraksha Mancha (JDS SM) in Assam’s Guwahati city also demand a ban on religious conversion of tribal people in Assam. Hundreds of Boro, Karbi, Tiwa, Dimasa, Rabha, Mising and other tribes from 30 districts of Assam report-edly attended the rally.
“Conversion of tribal peo-ple in Assam and elsewhere in India to foreign religions has been a threat to indigenous faiths and cultures for decades. The rate of conversion has in-creased and the ST people fall prey to communal theocratic foreign religious groups,” alle-ged JDSSM working president Binud Kumbang.
He said conversion could be checked if the converted tribal people are stripped off the Scheduled Tribe list. “The converted people completely give up their original tribal culture, customs, rituals, way of life, and traditions,” he alleged.
Allen Brooks, spokesper-son of the United Christian Fo-rum of Assam, says Christians would respond to the issue, but would to do it collectively tak-ing all denominations together.