The upcoming beatification of an Indian nun murdered over 20 years ago, will be an inspi-ration for India’s persecuted Christians, say local church leaders. Indian Catholics are preparing for the Nov. 4 beati-fication ceremony of Sister Rani Maria Vattalil who was killed in a knife attack on Feb. 25, 1995 as she travelled on a bus near the city of Indore on her way to her home state Kerala for a vacation.

Sister Rani Maria was a member of the indigenous Franciscan Clarist Congregation in Indore Diocese situated in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. She was 41 years of age when she was murdered.

Her “beatification, obvious-ly, is going to be a great source of inspiration for the Church in India that faces persecution,” said Paul Abraham, a Catholic writer based in Madhya Pradesh where attacks on Christians are frequently reported.

Abraham, a former journalist who closely followed the cause of the heroic nun, said her life and death will become a focus for local Christian communities.

The Catholic Church in India cannot become directly involved in politics, but it can help guide its members to make politically mature judgments, says Cardinal Baselios Cleemis, president of the country’s Catholic bishops’ conference.

He said hate-mongering political ideologies and crimes that target Christians in India are best countered when Christians live out their faith heroically. The cardinal, 58, said a minority of Hindus are aggressively opposed to other religious communities. “They take aggressive steps to curtail the freedom of other religions. That is something very, very alarming,” said Cardinal Cleemis of the eastern rite Syro-Malankara Church.

Christian leaders have accused hardline Hindu groups of targeting Christians after the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014 in a landslide victory. These groups, who consider BJP their political wing, took the electoral victory as a mandate to accelerate turning India, which under the constitution is secular, into a Hindu nation. Christians, who make up only 2.3 percent of India’s 1.2 billion population, cannot change the development, the cardinal said.

In view of Nov. 2 All Souls Day, Catholic Church officials in Goa have advised not to use plastic and other toxic items to decorate graves to beat pollution and to safeguard environment.

The Church’s social welfare wing Caritas, in a letter to all parish priests and chaplains in the state, said these items should be shunned particularly on the occasion of All Souls Day, when Catholics visit and decorate their ancestors’ graves and pray for the departed souls.

The Believers Church has filed a defamation case against the head of the southern India’s top Protestant group for allegedly issuing statements against their supreme head and constitution.

Father Sijo Panthappallil, spokesperson of the Kerala-based Believers Church, issued a statement on October 16 saying their Bishop Joju Mathew of Niranom filed the case against Bishop Thomas K. Oommen, moderator of Church of South India (CSI).

The Judicial First Class Magistrate in Alleppy has admitted the case for issuing what he says are defamatory statements against their supreme head Archbishop K.P.Yohannan Metropolitan and other bishops. The petition claims the Believers Church was established with historical and constitutional episcopacy. Questioning the Church’s epis-copacy and making misleading and defamatory statements against their leaders were unfortunate and motivated by malice and personal hatred, it says. The petitioner states that the ceremonial consecration of K.P.Yohannan as the first bishop of the Church was solemnized by none other than former CSI Moderator Bishop K.J.Samuel in February 2003. The consecration ceremony was attended by renowned personalities in the socio-political spheres. The petition also alleged that the CSI moderator has been propagating that the CSI had never considered K.P.Yohannan as a bishop.

Kolkata will host a national colloquium on “Future of Christian Higher Education and Contemporary Transitions in India” on November 16 to launch the 80th year of Salesian College Sonada.

“For the first time, the colloquium will witness five Catholic universities of India,” Principal of Salesian College Dr George Thadathil told Matters to India on Oct. 22.

The event will be held at Don Bosco School Park Circus in Kolkata.

Father Thadthil adds, “The topic is pertinent in the contemporary educational scenario in India and the rising number of subtle attempts in the saffronization of educational establishments in the country.”

He expressed the hope that, “the colloquium while exposing the alarming trends in higher education will also inspire a growing number of Christian Institutions of educational excellence to upgrade them- selves to serve minorities and marginalized groups.” Salesian College Sonada, Darjeeling with a campus in Sliguri planes, a constituent college of North Bengal University, has applied for Autonomous status since two years. The Catholic Universities invited to participate in the colloquium include: Assam Don Bosco University Guwahati, Christ University Bangalore, St Xavier University Bhubaneswar, St Xavier University Kolkata, and St Joseph University Kohima, Nagaland.

The colloquium will discuss topics such as: Mission in Higher Education and Contemporary Transitions in India; Church’s Social Concern and Challenges from Corporates in Higher Education.

Among the speakers are: Chancellor of Don Bosco Univeristy Fr V.M. Thomas; Former Principal of Delhi’s St Stephen’s College Dr Valson Thampu; Vice-Chancellor of Christ University Dr Thomas C. Mathew; Professor of Eminence in Sociology & HoD Social Work Tezpur Central University Dr Virginius Xaxa; and Jesuit Higher Education Commission Coordinator Dr Xavier Alphonse.

Bishop Ivan Pereira of Jammu–Srinagar in northern India has asked the national government to ensure the safety of Muslim Rohingya refugees threatened by right-wing Hindu groups.

Death threats have caused more than 1,200 Rohingya to flee from the Jammu region where they have been sheltering since 2012 when ethnic violence flared in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India, has long endured a violent secessionist conflict involving local Muslims who want the region to become fully independent or join with Pakistan. Jammu–Srinagar Diocese covers the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir. Some Hindu groups fear the presence of Rohingya could exacerbate the internal violence.

Bishop Pereira stressed that it was strife in Myanmar’s Rakhine State that forced them to leave their homes. The Indian federal government has announced plans to deport roughly 40,000 “illegal” Rohingya from India. Of the state’s 12.5 million people, the Jammu region has roughly 6 million people, 62% of them Hindus and the rest nearly all Muslims.

A tribal organisation held a rally in Ranchi on Oct. 23 against the Jharkhand government’s Anti-Conversion Bill and its proposed amendments in the 2013 Land Acquisition Act. The Adivasi Sengel Abhiyan (ASA) organised the rally at Morabadi ground of Ranchi. “The government’s policies are anti-tribal. The state government is working against the sentiments of indigenous and tribal people. There is need to fight against the wrong policies of the state government,” Salkhan Murmu, president of AASA, said at the rally.

He said “The Anti-conversion Law and Amendment in the 2013 Land Acquisition Bill by the state is a cruel joke. We oppose both actions of the state government.” The BJP-led Jharkhand government has passed the Religious Independence Bill 2017. If a person is found guilty of converting a person then he will be liable to three years imprisonment. The state government has passed from the assembly to amend the 2013 Land Acquisition Act so that land can be acquired for industrial and other purposes. Tribal people numbering around 10,000 participated in the rally.

South Asian Jesuits are seeking collaboration with secular groups and marginalized people to make the region more tolerant and peaceful. ‘Collaboration and network for harmony’ was the theme that 112 leaders of Jesuits in Social Action (JESA) discussed on October 13-15 in Pune, western India. Program organizer and JESA secretary Father Stanislaus Jebamalai told ucanews.com the meeting focused on the ideals of freedom, justice and tolerance. JESA was started in 1973 to coordinate the work of Jesuit social workers in South Asia. The Pune gathering came two months after the Jesuit Conference of South Asia circulated a document that stressed South Asian nations were struggling against economic inequalities, caste discrimination and cultural hegemony. The statement noted that in India and Pakistan fundamentalist forces threatened religious minorities as well as progressive individuals and organizations.

For centuries, Catholics in India have drawn support from and expressed their faith through the liturgies, traditions and spiri-tualities of three different rites; Pope Francis said it is time that all of them, no matter where they live in the country, have their own bishops.

The Vatican announced on 10 October that Pope Francis had created two new eparchies, or dioceses, for the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and extended the boundaries of two others. A letter from Pope Francis to all the bishops of India explained the move.

Close to 20 million Catholics live in India; the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church has about 4.2 million members and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church has about 450,000 faithful.

“In India, even after many centuries, Christians are only a small proportion of the population and, consequently, there is a particular need to demonstrate unity and to avoid any semblance of division,” Pope Francis wrote. But the different Catholic rites do not have to be a sign of division when they are, in fact, “a treasure” for the church.

“I have therefore authorized the Congregation for the Oriental Churches to provide for the pastoral care of the Syro-Malabar faithful throughout India by the erection of two Eparchies and by the extension of the boundaries of the two already in existence” Pope Francis wrote.

“I decree also that the new circumscriptions, as with those already in existence, be entrusted to the pastoral care of the Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly and to the Synod of Bishops of the Syro-Malabar Church, according to the norms of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.”

“This is a historic move,” said Fr Paul Thelakat, a senior priest of the church and its former spokesperson. “It removes administrative restrictions imposed on the church by Portuguese missionaries since the 16th century.”