If Fr Ralin de Souza is not celebrating a mass at the Shrine of our Lady of Fatima in the city, you can bet your last penny that he will be at the nearby basketball court.

A Salesian priest at Don Bosco, Fr Ralin has been heading the Goa Basketball Association (GBA) for four years and has now achieved a unique distinction: He is the best-quali-fied basketball coach from Goa and the third-best in the country.

“Basketball is now my vocation. I give it religious significance,” said Fr Ralin, who is the only Goan basketball coach to be listed on the FIBA-WABC website among 111 Indian coaches who are qualified after the intensive coaching program undertaken by FIBA and WABC in India.

From among all his passions, Father Ralin always gave special importance to basket-ball.

The tomb was alongside his wife Usha Narayanan in the non-denominational cemetery run by the Delhi Cemeteries Committee on Prithviraj Road. Chitra, the eldest of Narayanan’s two daughters and former IFS officer, in an email told Outlook: “The burial was done according to the wishes of her mother (Usha), a Christian.”

During his stint in Rangoon as an Indian Foreign Service Official, Narayanan had met his wife, a Burmese woman named Tint Tint, an Evangelist protestant. He married her in 1950 after the Centre gave its blessing. Tint Tint later adopted the name Usha.

“After the passing of Shri KR Narayanan, the State Funeral and cremation according to Hindu rites took place in Karma Bhumi near Rajghat,” said Chitra. “A small portion of the ashes were retained by his widow Smt Usha Narayanan, a Christian, to be buried alongside her. At her passing in 2008, this was done according to her wishes at the Prithviraj Road cemetery. This was an entirely private wish and should be respected accordingly.” “A part of the ashes was mingled with those of Shri KR Narayanan’s late parents. Shri KR Narayanan was a Hindu and respected equally all religions,” Chitra said.

The per-household religious contribution of Christians is the highest among all communities, as per data from the 72nd round of National Sample Survey (NSS) on Household Expenditure on Services and Durable Goods.

After Christians, it is the Sikhs followed by Muslims who contribute more to charity. But in absolute terms, Hindus contributed maximum in 2014-15, thanks to larger population, according to National Sample Survey data.

The data were recently extracted from the NSS’ raw findings by a team of researchers led by Sabir Ahamed of the Pratichi Institute and Zakaria Siddiqui, research assistant at the Crawford School of Public Policy, Austra-lian National University. The 72nd round was conducted in 2014-15, but could be accessed only in late 2016.

Religious contributions are divided under two heads: the contribution to institutions is ‘charity’ and the non-charitable part is under ‘priests and rituals.’ Hindus contribute 82 per house-hold per month to charities and 92 to the priests, while Muslims give 126 and 54 to charities and Maulanas respectively.

Contributions multiplied by each surveyed household of Hindus in the country indicates that the community contributes 15,600 crore to priests and charities. The actual contribution of Muslims is 2,580 crore.

About 300 people from two parishes at Dasarahalli in Bangaluru pledged to donate their eyes. The parishioners belonging to St Claret and St Joseph Church on July 16 pledged to donate their eyes with Project Vision, an organization working for the cause in the city.

So far more than 60,000 people have pledged to donate their eyes with Project Vision. Already 100 people have received sight through the donations done through this organisation in various parts of the country. According to Project Vision, in 2016, only about 26,000 people donated their eyes in India, though there were about 85 lakh deaths reported.

Indian Americans, spanning various communities, held protests in three US cities, to express their outrage over lynching of minorities by mobs in India and the Narendra Modi government’s policies which are “emboldening such forces.”

The protests here as well as San Diego and San Jose were organised by The Alliance for Justice and Accountability (AJA), an umbrella coalition of progressive organisations across the US, and other groups. A fourth protest is scheduled to be held in New York City on July 23, said a press release from AJA.

These protests are similar to the “Not In My Name” protests that have been held across various cities in India. Besides the AJA, the protests in San Jose were jointly organised with the “Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice,” while the South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI), will be part of the protests in New York City.

Protesters slammed the “brutal killings of mostly Muslims and Dalits in the name of cow protection,” alleging these were orchestrated by “Hindu supremacist groups ideologically aligned” with the BJP-led central government and “drawing inspiration” from the beef ban imposed by the governments in various states.

“The reign of terror unleashed by Hindu supremacist cow vigilantes is clearly targeted at browbeating the nation’s religious minorities into the status of second class citizens,” said Suhail Syed, one of the organisers of the protests in Washington DC.

Protesters in San Jose carried signs, such as “India – Hostage to Hindutva?” and “Beef Ban is Cultural Fascism.”

The AJA has pledged to work with people of all faiths to defend India from the onslaught of hate and divisiveness.

The Jesuit-run St Xavier’s college in Kolkata city marked its transformation as India’s first Jesuit university when opened its new academic year on July 7, just six months after achieving the new status.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee unveiled the plaque of the new building along with business tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, a former student of St Xavier’s, who funded the building.

The Archbishop Thomas blessed the Marble statue of St Xavier after a short prayer at the entrance marking the opening of first academic session of university.

The 157-year-old institution was allowed to build a university in New Town, a satellite city of Kolkata, last December when state legislature unanimously passed a bill –The St Xavier’s University, Kolkata Bill 2016.

Jesuit Father Felix Raj, vice chancellor of the university, told the gathering that they could not have achieved it but for the support of many people. Welcoming the new students he said: “We shall try the best to form them men and women for others. It is only the beginning and we will slowly grow,” he said.

The Bombay High court on June 30 by way of interim relief, restrained the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) from demolishing two Holy crosses located in Bandra (W) until further orders.

A division bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Vibha Kankanwadi restrained the BMC while hearing a petition filed by Bombay Catholic Sabha. Senior Counsel Joaquim Reis appearing for the Sabha argued that the cross situated at Chapel Road and near Nandi Talkies, both in Bandra, have been there since a long time and cannot be said to be illegally built. He informed the court that since the Sabha had agreed to remove/relocate the two crosses located in the Khar area on their own, the notice for demolition was not maintainable. The bench, while asking the civic body to file its reply to the petition, posted the matter for further hearing in second week of July. Till then, the BMC cannot take any coercive action. The civic body had issued notices to the Sabha on June 24 asking them to relocate the holy crosses or it demolish them.

Church groups in the central Indian State of Madhya Pradesh have joined a government ini-tiative to plant millions of saplings to arrest climate change and propagate a message of conserving water.

All nine Catholic dioceses in the state joined the government’s 12-hour long tree plantation drive on July 2. The government claimed 60 million saplings were planted in one day; most of them on the banks of the river Narmada, considered a holy river by majority Hindus in the state.

“It was a great move in the direction of protecting the environment, conserving water and promoting greenery, thereby arresting the ill-effects of climate change,” said Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur.

Bishop Almeida issued a special circular to all parishes and Catholic institutions, urging priests, nuns and the laity to actively participate in the state’s plantation drive, said Father Somy Jacob, a parish priest of Jabalpur.

For nearly half a century, Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who worked with the poor in the Indian city of Kolkata wore a simple white sari with three blue stripes on the borders, one thicker than the rest.

Senior nuns who work for Missionaries of Charity, a 67-year-old sisterhood which has more than 3,000 nuns worldwide, continue to wear what has now become the religious uniform of this global order.

On July 10, news washed up that this “famous” sari of the Nobel laureate nun, who died in 1997, has been trademarked to prevent “unfair” use by people for commercial purposes. India’s government quietly recognised the sari as the intellectual property of the Missionaries of Charity in September last year, when the nun was declared a saint by the Vatican, but the order had decided not to make it public.

Biswajit Sarkar, a Kolkata-based lawyer who works pro-bono for the order, says he had applied for the trademark in 2013. “It just came to my mind that the colour identified blue border of the sari had to be protected to prevent any future misuse for commercial purposes,” he told me. “If you want to wear or use the colour pattern in any form, you can write to us and if we are convinced that there is no commercial motive, we will allow it.”

The austere blue-trimmed white sari has long been identified with the nun and her order. The story goes that in 1948, the Albanian nun, with permission from Rome, began wearing it and a small cross across her shoulder. According to some accounts, the nun chose the blue border as it was associated with purity. For more than three decades, the saris have been woven by leprosy patients living in a home run by the order on the outskirts of Kolkata.