The January 14 acquittal of Bishop Franco Mulakkal in a rape case involving a Catholic sister has been challenged in an appellate court by both the accuser and the prosecution.
Bishop Mulakkal confirms that the government and the nun have appealed to the high court against his acquittal. “Yes. It is their right. We respect it,” he told GSR.
Under Indian law, acquittals in criminal cases may be appealed.
The accuser filed the appeal March 28 in the Kerala High Court online, but it was not officially listed because of some defects in the filing. The nun’s supporters told Global Sisters Report on March 30 that they will fix the problems and the case should be listed in a day or two.
Meanwhile, the home department of the Kerala state government on March 29 sanctioned the prosecution to appeal Mulakkal’s acquittal.
The government move ended the speculation that the Communist-led government in Kerala was not serious about appealing the acquittal.

A close relative of a Catholic priest found dead under suspicious circum-stances inside a major seminary in southern India has demanded a federal agency probe to establish the truth. Father K.J. Thomas, 62, the then rector of St. Peter’s Pontifical Institute, Bangalore (now Bengaluru) in Karnataka state, was found dead with multiple injuries outside his room at the seminary on April 1, 2013.
“My uncle was physically tortured and murdered in the most inhuman way,” Joyson Mathew claimed in a March 27 communiqué addressed to Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore, blaming ethnic rivalry within the archdiocese for the suspected murder.
The nephew of the deceased priest said his family was not happy with the tardy investigations conducted by the state’s police and urged the Arch-bishop to pursue the Karnataka state government to hand over the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a premier federal agency.

A renowned Asian theologian says the synodal process now underway in the Catholic Church should prepare it to become relevant in the third millennium and respond to modern challenges.
Synodality reflects how the Church’s life and mission should adapt to the modern world. It flows from the Christian value of upholding hu-mans as unique reflection of God’s mystery and image, asserts Father Felix Wilfred, emeritus professor at the State University of Madras, and the founder director of the Asian Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies in Chennai.
The 74-year-old priest was the keynote speaker at a national conference on the theme “Church in India on the Path of Synodality” organized by the department of missiology of Bengaluru’s St Peter’s Pontifical Institute.
The March 21-23 conference was held to help the Church in India reflect on synodal theme, explained Fr Antony Lawrence, who head the department.
Father Wilfred expects the synodal process to lead a tran-sition from the Bishops’ synod to the synodal Church. For this, drastic structural changes are required, a major theological issue synodal process should address, he asserted.
He said when the Church really practices synodality it would become an inverted pyramid. For this, the canon law that now vests the governance on the clergy, has to change to allow all baptized Catholic to share in the exercise of power.

Bishop Emeritus Stephen Athipozhiyil of Alleppey passed away due to cardiac arrest on April 9, at 8.15 pm at St. Sebastian, Visitation Hospital, Arthunkal in Kerala. He was 77. Funeral was held on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at Mount Carmel Cathedral at 10.30 am.

Another mysterious death of a novice nun was reported from Kerala, the southern Indian state with a sizable Catholic population.
The 21-year-old nun trainee had gone to room at 10:30 pm on April 1. When she did not join a special night prayer in the convent chapel, sisters went to her room and found her hanging. They rushed Alex to a nearby Dharmagiri Hospital where she was declared brought dead.

The Catholic Church has lost another Church in the land of Telugu.
Bishop Emeritus Innayya Chinna Addagatla of Srikakulam died at 11:30 pm on April 1, at the residence of the local Bishop. He was 84, says a report from Father Stephen Alathara, deputy secretary general of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in India.

The Church in the undivided Andhra Pradesh on March 30 mourned the death of Bishop Mathew Cheriankunnel, who had sacrificed his life for Telugu people.
The first Bishop of Nalgonda diocese died in the afternoon of March 30 in the regional house of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh. He was 91.

A Catholic archdiocese in the southern Indian state of Kerala has informally begun the documentation on Ajna George, who many now view as an apostle of Eucharist.
Ajna, a member of the Jesus Youth movement and an assistant professor, died January 21 in Kochi, the commercial capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala. She was 27 when she died fighting cancer.

Sister Paul Vincent, a member of the Daughters of St Anne of Calcutta died in road accident in a remote area in West Bengal state.
Sister Vincent’s funeral Mass was held at 3 pm on March 28 in St. Paul the Apostle Church in Kamarchowki followed by the burial in nearby St. Anne’s Convent compound.