Every third Jesuit who succumbed to Covid-19 in the world since June 2020 was Indian, according to a list circulated by Father Arturo Sosa, superior general of the Society of Jesus. The list, sent with a letter to all heads of 83 provinces, six independent regions and ten dependent regions, shows that as many as 158 Jesuits died of Covid-19 within a year starting June 2020. Among them 50 were Indians and two Sri Lankans.
Father Sosa recalled the death of another 44 Jesuits due to Covid in the previous year. “This list is long, and it would be even longer if we added the names of all our relatives who have left us,” he says.
The Covid toll adds to the already dwindling numbers among the Jesuits. As of 2018, the Society of Jesus had 15,842 members: 11,389 priests and 4,453 men in formation. This was 56 percent less than 36,038 in 1965, when the congregation’s membership peaked.

Father John Fernandes, founder president of the Catholic Priests’ Conference of India (CPCI), died in Mangaluru on July 3, the feast of Saint Thomas. He was 85.
The funeral is scheduled at 9:30 am on July 4 at St.Joseph the worker Church, Vamanjor, Mangaluru.
Father Fernandes, a priest of Mangalore diocese, had made a mark as a renowned human rights activist and a promoter of interreligious dialogue. He had led a number of movements for justice for Dalits, farmers and villagers while serving as pastor of rural parishes under the diocese of Mangalore.
He also fought for the rights of the Catholic diocesan priests in India the leader of CPCI, which was once the national forum of priests influenced by liberation theology.
As a dialogue activist he had addressed several meetings of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS), the umbrella organiza-tions of the Hindu nationalist groups, as an invitee on topics related to interreligious har-mony. He was the recipient of the Herbert Haag Award for Freedom in the Church from Lucerne, Switzerland in 2007.
Fr Onil D’Souza, the dire-ctor of the St Anthony’s poor homes where Father Fernandes spent his last days, said he was “deeply touched by his passion for the poor, his secular app-roaches and sense of justice all through his priestly life.”

In a rare diplomatic gesture, India has returned the relics of a Christian saint and Georgian queen killed in Iran for refusing to give up her faith 400 years ago and buried in Goa.
Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar handed over the relics of St Queen Ketevan to his Georgian counterpart David Zalkaliani on July 10 during a two-day visit to Georgia.
Ketevan was the queen of Kakheti, a kingdom in eastern Georgia in the 17th century. Iranian King Shah Abbas I took her hostage after he conquered her kingdom in 1613-14.
She refused to convert to Islam or join the Iranian ruler’s harem and is believed to have been tortured to death on Sept. 22, 1624.
Some Augustinian friars in 1627 brought her body to Goa, then a Portuguese colony. It was buried and remained hidden inside the Augustinian convent in Goa.

The Rainbow Home of the Seven Sisters (RHoSS) aims to provide a home for homeless transgender women and help them build a better future. The new facility – located in Guwahati, Assam’s commercial capital– is the brainchild of Sister Prema Chowallur, a member of the Sisters of the Cross of Chavanod, who has been working with marginalized people since 2016.

Fr Stan Swamy, who died on Monday at the age of 84, was laid to rest today. His fellow Jesuits described the service as “The funeral of a saint of our time”, held in St Peter’s Church in Bandra (Mumbai). Only 20 people were able to take part in the ceremony due to COVID-19 restrictions, but the Mass was streamed live.

On June 15, a new version of the local anti-conversion law came into force in the Indian state of Gujarat: it mainly targets “love jihad”. And just four days later, in the city of Vadovara, the police filed a complaint arresting six people, including five members of the same family.
A 24-year-old woman raised this case, which shows how divisive the issue is in the Indian states where the Hindu nationalists of the BJP rule.

The Indian Women Theologians’ Forum says it will campaign for the repeal of draconian laws that unjustly incarcerate those working for justice and human rights. Mourning the death of Father Stan Swami, the association of women theologians from various Christian denominations, expressed shock and anguish that the government labelled the Jesuit activist’s work as seditious whereas the State should have been doing what the priest had done – “upholding the Constitutional rights of all Indians.”

“There was a ministry for minorities in the past which was a good, successful experience. Currently, minority issues are handled by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, which is usually occupied dealing with other religious affairs and the promotion of interfaith harmony in Pakistan,” said the president of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
“A lot has to be done for minorities so that they don’t feel insecure in Pakistan,” the prelate said, adding that forced marriages and forced conversions are alarming issues for religious minorities in Pakistan.
In November 2008, the federal Ministry for Minorities was established for the first time in Pakistan. Shahbaz Bhatti, the Catholic federal minister for minorities who was assassinated in March 2011, was appointed federal minister for minorities affairs.
In 2011, the federal Ministry for Minorities was replaced by the Ministry for National Harmony and Minorities Affairs. On returning to power in 2013, the Pakistan Muslim League merged the Ministry for National Harmony and Minorities Affairs into a larger ministry, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony. The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party appointed provincial ministers for minority affairs.
In May 2020, the government constituted a National Commission for Minorities (NCM) with Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore as one of its members. Rights groups, including the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), criticized the formation of the commission through an executive order.
Peter Jacob, the Catholic director of the CSJ, described the federal Ministry for Minority Affairs an experiment of the past.

The women section of the Conference of Religious of India undertook a study after media reported about widespread exploitation of Catholic women religious in the Church.
The reports in L’Osservatore Romano and Matters India in 2018 spoke of nuns in menial occupations with little recognition from their “employers” in the Church.
“The articles were eye openers and instrumental in telling us that it’s time sisters in India wake up and take responsibility for their collective future,” says a statement from Sisters Hazel D’Lima and Noella de Souza, who conducted the CRI study during 2019-2020.
Sister D’Lima is a member of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary and de Souza belongs to the Missionaries of Christ Jesus. Besides exploring the truth in the media reports, the study looked at the working relations between women religious and the hierarchy.
The study was published mid-June as a book titled “It’s High Time, Women Religious speak up on Gender Justice in the Indian Church.” It is for private circulation, not for sale, de Souza clarifies.
“Our study proved to be path breaking as it is the first of its kind. Although nothing seemed new to me, many areas are striking. One is to do with matters concerning property, where through the various different instances stated, it is the same problematic that comes across constantly, this which reflects the power relations between men and women in the Church. Church authorities almost always take the moral high ground. This power over property is only one symptom of the power dynamics within the structure of the Church.”
“Without consecrat-ed women there would be no Church in India, let’s be clear about it. It is the women religious who reach far flung places where no clergy man would set up home and it is the women religious who undertake Mission work, which most clergymen would never think of doing.” “Even if the Church offers to ordain women tomorrow, I would not want to be ordained; I would lose my prophetic charism, as I would become part of the structure of the Church. Now, I am free to exercise my prophetic vocation in the Church.”

A human rights group working for Christians who are being persecuted because of their faith condemned the “forced conversion” of a 13-year-old girl who works as a household help in Pakistan.
“Perhaps Pakistan is the only country where such crimes are happening on a daily basis under the cover of Islam,” said Nasir Saeed, director of the Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS). He said the forced conversion of the girl is “the most egregious example of modern slavery and religious abuse.”
“There is no room for such callous justification in modern society. Pakistan cannot continue in the dark ages of Islamic practices to enslave Christian and Hindu girls in Pakistan,” said Saeed.
CLAAS reported that a Muslim doctor “forcefully converted” Neha, a 13-year-old Christian girl, to Islam to allow her to work in their family kitchen.