Three Catholic nuns were among 33 outstanding women entrepreneurs awarded for successfully fighting Covid pandemic with business plans.
The awardees were selected from among 1,408 women supported by Functional Vocational Training and Research Society (FVTRS) through Child Fund and City Bank to rebuild people’s lives after the pandemic.

Police in central India have re-arrested a lay Catholic school principal accused of sexually assaulting young girls, which local people say is part of a conspiracy to deny education to tribal people. Nam Singh Yadav was arrested and detained in judicial custody on March 7, three days after he and three others — a Catholic nun, priest and another lay male teacher — were accused of violating the rights of children.

An estimated 14,000 Christians in southern Vietnam attended a historic religious event organized by an American evangelist association in Ho Chi Minh City.
People including government officials from the city and neighbouring provinces attended the Spring Love Festival held by the US-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association at the Phu Tho Sports Facility on Mar. 4-5.
Reverend Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the association told the crowds that “God makes and creates you and loves you and Vietnam. Jesus is in the city tonight.”
Each day some 7,000 people attended public Bible talks and Gospel singing, local media said.
Graham said he was in the Southeast Asian country at the invitation of local churches.
More than 900 pastors and church leaders from 60 denominations worked together for the event. This was the first time “so many denominational leaders had been under one roof,” the association claimed on its website.
Before the event, Graham reportedly met with Deputy Prime Minister Le Minh Khai and other officials to discuss the diversity of religions and support for religious freedom in the country.

Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore says the Church will continue to do its good works without fear.
“Even if a case is filed against me, accusing me of indulging in conversion, for providing education and healthcare to the Dalits and the marginalized, I would continue with those good works,” Archbishop Machado asserted.
The archbishop is the leader of the Catholic Church in the southern Indian state of Karnataka that has enacted anti-conversion law last year. He also heads the All Karnataka United Christian Forum for Human Rights, an ecumenical body.
“No government can stop us from doing good works; no one can challenge us,” the 68-year-old prelate asserted.
He challenged the government to come out with the data on the number of children converted in Christian educational institutions.
The archbishop was speaking at a function to felicitate Baselios Marthoma Mathews III, the Catholicos of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, in Bengaluru, the state capital.
With a few months left for the Assembly elections in Karnataka, the archbishop’s speech is seen as a sign of the community’s approach to the ruling party and the government’s policies against Christians.
Archbishop Machado slammed the fundamentalists for playing petty politics and spreading fake news that teaching the Bible has been made compulsory at Clarence school in Bengaluru.
Earlier, the archbishop had called the anti-conversion law “dangerous” and termed it a “sad chapter for the Christian community.”
He had also written to Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai appealing not to promote the “undesirable and discriminatory” Bill.
According to the new law, any converted person, his parents, brother, sister, or any other person who is related to him by blood, marriage, adoption, or in any form associated, or colleague may lodge a complaint of illegal religious conversion. The offense is non-bailable.
The bill prohibits unlawful conversion of religion, providing protection to those who were forced to convert from one religion to another by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement, the promise of marriage, or by any fraudulent means and for the matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

An institute that trains addiction professionals globally has honored two of its alumna who have excelled in prevention and management of substance use disorder in Africa and India.
Ecolink Training Institute, which has trained more than 300 addiction professionals from 20 countries in the past three years, awarded Odireleng Kasale, a recovery professional from Botswana, and Devika Rani, prevention expert from India’s Hyderabad, in a virtual meeting held on March 9.
Kasale, a recovering person herself who was trained in the Ecolink Institute in the Universal Treatment Curriculum on Substance Use Disorder in 2020, said she could carry out a successful recovery program in her country by networking with several young men and women who was struggling with drugs.
Also, a consultative committee member of World Health Organization and a trainer in Recovery Coaching in her country, Kasale has contributed to the policy formation and professionalizing the addiction management in her country.
Kasale and Devika were awarded with a citation and certificate, besides a one-year free package on advanced training in various curricula related to addiction management from Ecolink Institute.

Catholic bishops of the southern Indian state of Kerala have demanded a ban on a stage show that they say insults Ca-tholic monastic life and Chri-stianity.
“The communist organiza-tions are giving huge publicity for the drama,” says a state-ment issued by the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC), referring to the Ma-layalam play, “Kakkukali” that describes the alleged trials and tribulations of a woman who becomes a nun despite her Co-mmunist father’s opposition.
However, those behind the drama term it as an expression of freedom. The drama is an adaptation of a short story written by Francis Norona. It was scripted by K B Ajayaku-mar and directed by Job Ma-dathil.
It was staged by Alappuzha-based Neythal Nataka San-gham.
KCBC president Cardinal Baselios Cleemis condemned the drama saying it was against the cultural fabric of Kerala and staging it was a blot on the culture of the state.
The statement issued by KCBC deputy secretary Jacob Palakkapilly says the play in-sults the self-respect and con-fidence of nuns, and has been included in the state govern-ment’s international drama fest.

Christians in a northeast Indian state are opposing a ban on organizing and publicizing healing prayer events, saying it violates the constitutional right to practice their religion.
Authorities in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Siang district issued an order on Feb. 28 banning all kinds of “prayer healing, healing crusades, healing through the local priest, pujas [ritual worship in Hinduism], as a remedy to cure various diseases and illness.”
The order issued by a district magistrate said “such practices are misleading the innocent people from taking recourse to scientific medical treatment and cause severe health issues.”
The healing prayer programs also give rise “to social-cultural problems like conversion to other faith and thereby spread discord among people and groups,” the order said.
It further banned publicizing such events invoking the Drug and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act 1954, which prohibits the advertisement of remedies alleged to possess magic qualities.

The government order stated that the ban is applicable to “all individuals, groups, faiths, and religions.”
“This order is against our fundamental right to practice our religion,” said Tarh Miri Stephen, president of the Arunachal Christian Forum.
Stephan told UCA News on March 7 that his organization will call on the district magistrate who issued the order to know the reasons and appeal to him to withdraw it.
“In case the district magistrate does not comply, we will apprise top officials in the government including the state’s chief minister,” he said.
Stephan did not rule out approaching the courts if the political leadership failed to protect their constitutional right to religious worship.

The mysterious death of a tribal Catholic girl in a government-managed hostel has led to unrest in a district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
The girl, a ninth grader of Jawahar Navodaya School in Paralakhemundi, the headquarters of Gajapati district, was found dead on February 20 in the school hostel.
While the school authorities claim the Catholic girl had died by suicide, her relatives and Church people allege it was murder after rape.

A Catholic priest and three nuns were among six people who died February 26 in a road accident in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya. The victims were identified as Father Mathew Das, parish priest and principal St. John’s H S School, Barama, and Fatima Sisters Milagrine Dantes, Promila Tirkey, and Rossie Nongrum, and teacher Mairan, besides the driver of the vehicle.

“Bible is truly the inspired Word of God. Hence, attentively and devotedly reading the Bible daily is listening to God Himself who is its author,” said Rev. Fr Domenico Soliman, Superior General of the Society of St Paul, at Subodha Nilayam Communications, Eluru, inaugurating the newly-erected Central Office of the “A Bible for Every Home”, a flagship project of the Diocesan Communication Centre, entrusted to the members of the Society of St Paul. The Congregation is also responsible for the pastoral care of St Theresa’s Parish, Eluru, in addition to managing Alberione Book and Media Centre, the only Catholic Book Centre in the region.