The Churches of Asia, in communion with Catholic communities around the world, yesterday marked the start of the two-year synodal path announced by Pope Francis centred on the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission”.
The first phase, which entails listening to the whole people of God, will see individual dioceses take the lead.
To this end, Card Oswald Gracias, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), led a solemn Mass in the Cathedral of the Holy Name of Jesus in Mumbai.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, only 122 people representing various groups attended the service, while thousands more people followed the service via online streaming.
In a show of the willingness to listen to everyone, women were given a prominent place in the liturgical readings. A migrant woman from Jharkhand proclaimed the first reading in Hindi (the national language), while a second woman performed the second reading in Marathi (the local language). Prayers were also recited in Tamil and Konkani.
In his homily, Card Gracias said, “the Synodal process [is] meant to reform the church, by discerning what ails the Church, which means even listening to those who have left the Church and those who are thinking of leaving the Church, [for] they have a story to tell, which might make us reflect.”

Leaders of various religious communities and social organizations have started a journey in the southern Indian state of Kerala to promote communal harmony and national integration.
The journey named ‘Sarva Dharma Sadbhavana Yatra’ (Journey to foster goodwill among all religions, is an initiative of the Dharmabharathi mo-vement and promoted by a 16-member team. The journey was flagged off October 8 from Ananda Ashram, a Hindu centre, in Kasargod, Kerala’s northernmost town. It will end October 14 at Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital in the south.

A top court in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has ruled that a Dalit Hindu woman marrying a Christian or displaying religious symbols such as the cross cannot be cited as reasons to revoke her scheduled caste (SC) community certification. The Madurai bench of Madras High Court held that hanging the cross on a wall or going to church does not necessarily mean one has altogether abandoned the original faith to which one was born and cannot be the basis for cancelling an SC certificate.
The bench was hearing the case of Dr. P. Muneeswari, who belongs to the Hindu Pallan community. Her SC certificate was cancelled by district officials in Ramana-thapuram in 2013 on grounds that she was married to a Christian man and their child-ren were also being brought up in the Christian faith. The officials had reached the decision after finding a cross hanging on the wall of her clinic and concluded that she had converted to Christianity and hence was not liable to continue as a member of her Hindu SC community.
Members of the Hindu Dalit or former untouchable communities in India are often discriminated against under the centuries-old caste system. In legal and constitutional terms, they are now listed as scheduled castes enabling them to access the government’s affirmative action policies and programs.
Dalits who converted to Christianity and Islam are excluded from India’s affirmative action plan that includes reservations in educational institutions and government jobs among other social welfare schemes.

Panchjanya, a weekly ma-gazine linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has sought an inquiry into the Indian Catholic Church and its clergy while citing the recent expose of child sexual abuse within the French Church.
In its latest issue, which will hit the stands on Oct. 17, the magazine has reportedly published a cover story on the sexual exploitation of children and nuns by priests across the world.
Panchjanya, published in Hindi to uphold Hindu patri-otism in keeping with the objectives of the nationalist RSS, has claimed that incidents of sexual exploitation of children and nuns are on the rise in India too.
Referring to the reported incidents of rape of a woman in a missionary college in Che-nnai and a nun from Kerala, the magazine has said the people of the country wanted a probe against the Church and its priests.
Detailing the inquiry that unearthed the scale of abuse within the French Church, the magazine termed the earlier apology by Pope Francis in 2019 for such incidents a “formality under pressure.”
It went on to question and blame the style of functioning of the Church for the declining number of religious nuns acro-ss the globe. A similar trend was witnessed in the southern Indian state of Kerala and so the Church was targeting girls from poor families in under-developed states such as Chha-ttisgarh, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Odisha, the maga-zine alleged.

In Mumbai’s jewellery bazaar, Kavita Jogani gingerly places her wedding bangles on the shopkeeper’s scales, one of the thousands of Indians parting with their most cherished asset – gold.
It was not an easy decision – Jogani was desperate after her garment business took a severe hit in the past year and a half with multiple corona-virus lockdowns, making it difficult to pay shop bills and the salaries of her 15 emplo-yees.
The headline growth numbers suggest Asia’s third-largest economy is rebounding from the economic crisis un-leashed by Covid-19, but there is no end yet to the financial pain for many Indians.
“I don’t have any other option than selling the gold,” said Jogani as she waited nervously for the shop owner to make her an offer.
“I bought these bangles before my wedding 23 years ago,” the 45-year-old told.
Business closures and job losses pushed more than 230 million Indians into poverty in the past year, according to a study by Azim Premji University, leaving many struggling to pay rent, school fees and hospital bills.
Their difficulties have been compounded in recent weeks by soaring prices for electricity, fuel and other items.

The opposition from Hindu nationalists’ organiza-tions has compelled a Jesuit-run institution in the southern Indian state of Karnataka to postpone the naming of a park inside its campus after late Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy.
The 140-year-old St. Aloy-sius College in Mangaluru had decided to hold the naming ceremony on Oct. 7 but post-poned it citing President Ra-manath Kovind’s two-day offi-cial visit to the city.
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, its youth wing Bajrang Dal and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Pa-rishad, the students’ wing of the ruling BJP, had threatened to stage a protest if the college went ahead with the plan. The park is located on the college’s Beeri campus on the outskirts of the coastal city but VHP said it would be an insult to name it after someone accused of terror activities.
“It is unfair to oppose the naming of the park in the name of Father Stan and to brand him as a Maoist because it is not yet proven in court,” Father Denzil Fernandes told.

Some 50 Christ devotees attending Sunday service were attacked by Hindu radicals in the Mau district of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The activists of Bajrang Dal (party of the stout and strong) and Hindu Yuva Vahini, a youth group, paraded the Christians to the nearby police station where they were detained until late night on October 10.
Seven of them, including three women and a pastor, were sent to jail for attempting forced religious conversion and other allegations.
Meanwhile two Ursuline Franciscan nuns, who had come to the city bus stand, were forcibly taken to the police station and kept there from 12:30 pm to 6 p.m. They were released under pressure from high ranking police officials from Lucknow, the state capital.
Sister Gracy Monteiro, working in Mirpur Catholic mission, told Matters India that she had gone to the bus stand to help her companion Sister Roshni Minj to board a bus to Varanasi.
Sister Minj was going home to visit her ailing father in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. As Minj went to ask about the bus, some Hindu radicals attacked the driver and forced the nuns to walk to the police station, where the Sunday worshipers were already detained..
Sister Monteiro said she was under terrible shock for almost an hour as she and Sister Minj were accused of being part of the Sunday worshippers who were allegedly attempting to forcibly converting the people.
Vijendra Rajbhar, the leader of the Christ devotees, told the police and the journalists that the Catholic nuns were not part of the prayer meeting. The Hindu radicals insisted that the nuns are part of the conversion gang.

CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, has condemned a recent raid carried out on facilities associated with human rights defender Harsh Mander, director of the Centre for Equity Studies, and called on the Indian government to stop intimidating rights activists.
On Sept. 16, the Enforcement Dire-ctorate under the Ministry of Finance conducted the raid on Mander’s residence, the Centre for Equity Studies’ office and a children’s home run by the organization under the pretext of investigating money-laundering allegations against him. The raid was carried out several hours after he departed for Germany to attend a fellowship program.
Mander has been critical of the Narendra Modi government. He has rais-ed concerns about how the government handled the pandemic, the increasing attacks on press freedom and the discri-minatory citizenship law passed in 2019 which human rights groups have called “unconstitutional and divisive.” Following the raid, more than 500 activists in India issued a joint statement in solidarity with Mander and condemned the intimi-dation tactics.
“The authorities must halt their harassment of human rights activist Harsh Mander. These actions conducted by the Enforcement Directorate are a clear tactic to intimidate and criminalize the defender. It also creates a chilling effect on govern-ment critics and is a strategy to force many to self-censorship,” said Josef Benedict, CIVICUS civic space researcher for Asia Pacific.
Similar raids were conducted by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights in October 2020 on two children’s homes associated with Mander based on accusations of financial irregu-larities and illicit activities.

People who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 are sinners for endangering other people, according to an Indonesian archbishop who has been infected with the virus.
“Let’s not say that I don’t need to be vaccinated. If you don’t want to be vaccinated, you are actually a sinner be-cause you will become a source of the disease for other peo-ple,” said Archbishop Petrus Canisius Mandagi of Merauke.
He was speaking at a Mass at the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in West Olilit, Maluku, on Sept.  22.
He invited his flock to think about the impact of Covid-19, which has killed millions of people worldwide.
“If we are not careful, everyone will die from Covid-19,” said Archbishop Mandagi, who is also the apostolic administrator of Amboina Diocese. The archbishop also urged his flock to think about their health and the health of others, including telling smokers to stop so that they do not fall victim to the virus.

A book on “United families source of Small Christian Communities” in Bengali was released on September 16 by Bishop Clement Tirkey of Jalpaiguri. It was released during the Regional Small Christian Communities (SCCs) meeting of West Bengal and Sikkim Region at Raiganj Pastoral Centre about 400 km north of Kolkata. This is the first Bengali book published on SCCs and family, said Bishop Salvadore Lobo, chairman of Bengal Regional Bishops’ Council.