A slum in this southwestern Indian city was once known as the “Enclave of Darkness” be-cause it was the den of thugs, alcoholics, drug runners and psychopaths.
It is now called Udaya Colony (Sunrise Enclave) after Catholic nuns dared to enter it 33 years ago as part of their mission to reach people in the peripheries.
What now welcomes visitors to the enclave in the middle of Kochi, the commercial capital of Kerala state, are buildings of two and three floors, paint-ed with attractive colors, that were once one-room, cramped tenements.
“The sisters faced stiff resistance in the beginning but people relented when they realized the sisters meant them good,” Anil Kumar, vice president of the Udaya Colony Residents Welfare Association, told Global Sisters Report.
Sister Anisha Arackal, who led the Sisters of the Destitute to turn the place into an upmarket residential area, recalls the slum’s notoriety.
Her congregation’s 1979 general chapter decided to help impoverished people and the marginalized on the peripheries, but it took 10 years for the first nuns to enter the Kochi slum. Sisters Redempta Alapp-at and Naveena Pulickal, the pioneers, started living in the slum in 1989, the year the congregation received pontifical status.
Alappat, 83, recalls reading an article in a magazine asking who will spread light in the enclave of darkness.

An average of one priest ministering to 8,000 souls is a sad picture of the priestly vocation unable to cope with the growing population. The 2021 Catholic Directory of the Philippines counted more than 120 active bishops and 10,470 priests serving 85 million Catholics. It’s the same number of clergy as 10 years ago while the Catholic population has grown since then.
Recent international conferences about the clergy and religious vocation, particularly in the West, have identified the priest shortage as the most urgent problems facing the Church. Priestless parishes, empty altars and empty pews are sad realities in some parts of North America and Europe — a crisis caused by retiring senior clergy, added to those leaving the priesthood and the ever-decreasing sacerdotal vocation.
Sexual abuse scandals, coupled with the not-so-good examples set by bi-shops along the corridors of power in the Vatican and elsewhere, were not unlike a tsunami wiping out the Church’s credibility for more than decade or so until Pope Francis assumed the Chair of Peter in 2013 and began the radical reform of the Roman Curia.
Change has come and the Church in Asia is gradually overcoming the crisis of priestly vocations. In Bangladesh, Catholics saw 12 young men ordained as deacons in 2022. In this predominantly Muslim country with 500,000 Catholics or about 0.4% of the total population, the Church celebrates with the gift of new laborers in the vineyard of the Lord.

Muslims took to the streets in huge protests around Asia after Friday on June 10 prayers, sparked by remarks about the Prophet Mohammed by an Indian ruling party official that embroiled the country in a diplomatic storm.
Anger has engulfed the Islamic world since last week when a spokes-woman for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party commented on the relationship between the prophet and his youngest wife on a TV debate show.

A group of young people from Tezu town in Arunachal Pradesh marked the World Bicycle Day by promoting the cause of peace and environment. The 10-memeber youth group, cycled from Krick and Bourry Memorial School in Tezu to Demwe in Lohit district and back, 20 kilo-meters, to campaign for peace in the world, and to spread awareness on the need to protect and preserve environment.

A Catholic nun has come to public with allegations of torture and mental harassment from her congregation. Sister Elcina, nee K.V Sudha, a member the Daughters of Our Lady of Mercy, an Italian congregation, made the revelation to media on June 7 in front of her provincial house in Mysore, a city in southern Indian state of Karnataka.
She alleged that her superiors had forcibly admitted to a mental hospital after her complaints to the state government about certain irregularities in her congregation.

The Indian Theo-logical Association and others have mourned the death of Jesuit Father Joseph Mattam, who had accompanied gene-rations of students in their theological research. The funeral was held May 30 at Vadodara’s Shrine of Our Mother of the Forsaken, Vadodara. Fr Mattam was a member of the Gujarat Jesuit province for 66 years and a priest for 55 years.

Catholics in India seem euphoric after Pope Francis named a Dalit from the country among the 21 new cardinals.
Pope Francis will create 21 new cardinals in the next consistory on Aug. 27, including five archbishops and one bishop from Asia. Sixteen of the new cardinals are under the age of 80, who are eligible to vote in a conclave to elect the successor of Pope Francis, and for five others the title is mostly honorary. Five Asian prelates are – Archbishop Felipe Nerri Ferrao of Goa and Daman (India), Archbishop Anthony Poola of Hyderabad (India), Archbishop William Goh of Singapore, Archbishop Virgilio Do Carmo Da Silva, SDB of Dili (East Timor), Arch-bishop Lazarus You Heung-sik, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy (South Korea), Archbishop Anthony Poola of Hyderabad, who was born in a Dalit Catholic family in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is among the two new cardinals from India. The other Indian is Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao of Goa and Daman. The Pope will create the cardinals at a consistory on Aug. 27.
Archbishop Poola’s elevation comes amid talks about an Indian Dalit Rite in the Catholic Church and protests by Dalit groups for bishops from their community.
A Dalit cardinal was also their demand for decades and they stepped it up after Pope John Paul II on October 21, 2003, made Cardinal Telesphore Placidus Toppo, the then archbishop of Ranchi, a prince of the Church. Cardinal Toppo claimed that the new title recognized India’s tribal Church.
Such recognition for the Dalits took 19 years more years, but it has made Jesuit Father Irudhaya Jothi, “extremely happy.” The grassroots activist now working in northeastern India says it is “a proud moment for the Dalit community in the world.”
Father Jothi and Ravi Kumar, a Dalit leader from Vijayawada diocese in Andhra Pradesh, say Archbishop Poola’s appoint-ment shows that Pope Francis continues to give recognition and representation to the Churches at the periphery and the marginalized communities.
Father Jothi said he prays that the Church gives “an emphatic hearing” to the standing demands of the Dalits, “the most exploited community.”

Indian Catholics have joined relief and rescue efforts organized by NGOs and government agencies as the death toll from flooding in Assam has reached 24 in the north-eastern state.
According to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority, the situation re-mains critical as nearly 720,000 people in 22 districts are reeling under the deluge, with Nagaon, Hojai, Cachar, Darrang, Morigaon and Karimganj districts badly affected.
“The flood situation in the state is very serious as several people have lost their lives. We pray for the bereaved families but in the meantime our immediate priority is to provide food, water, dry rations and medicine to affected people as the government is engaged in rescue and relocating people to safe places,” Archbishop John Moolachira of Guwahati told.
“Our social service wing along with its team are distributing food such as biscuits, bread, water and dry rations like rice, lentils, vegetables and salt as well as medicine and tarpaulins.”

Jesuit Fr Ephrem Manikompe, a renowned school teacher, died May 22, leaving a deep grief in the hearts of hundreds. After a cardiac arrest on May 19, he had a brief hospitalization. He was 80.
The member of the Kerala Jesuit province will always be remembered for his kindness and simplicity. He served as a teacher and headmaster of St. Joseph’s Higher Secondary School, Thiruvananthapuram, one of the premiere schools in Kerala, for a quarter century starting in the 1970s.

Christian leaders in the central Indian Madhya Pradesh have objected to the state government’s move to put Church-run schools under the microscope.
State home minister Narottam Mishra announced on May 16 that police will monitor Church-run schools to curb religious conversions.
A day earlier, police arrest-ed six people, including two pastors, after Bajrang Dal, a militant Hindu organization, complained of suspected illegal conversions at the Christ Memorial School in the state capital Bhopal.
The six were booked for hurting religious sentiments under the Indian Penal Code and released the same day.
School director Manis Mathew told on May 17 that a Sunday prayer service in the school hall “was wrongly portrayed as a religious conversion activity to target our institution.”
Church leaders across denominations view the police action and the decision to monitor all Christian schools as a deliberate attempt to target and defame Christians through a false narrative.