Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Cardinal Oswald Gracias as the Archbishop of Bombay on Jan 25 and elevated Coadjutor Bishop John Rodrigues as his successor in India’s largest diocese. Although retired from the archbishop’s office, Gracias continues serving on the Council of Cardinal Advisers. Gracias joined the Council of Cardinal Advisers in 2013 when Pope Francis established it and handpicked Gracias to be part of the nine-member team to advise him on revising the Roman Curia. Gracias “was a giant of a man, and now as his successor, I have mighty big shoes to fill,” Rodrigues, 57, said in a Jan. 25 statement. He thanked “Gracias for his dedicated service” to the archdiocese, the Church in India, and the Universal Church,” adding that they are proud of him. Rodrigues also urged his bishops, priests, religious men and women, and the Catholic community to work with the authorities and citizens “to further unity and true development in society.” Pope Francis appointed Rodrigues as coadjutor bishop on Nov. 30, and his installation took place only last week on Jan.23. Gracias said in a video message on Jan. 25 that Pope Francis “has accepted my resignation as the Archbishop of Bombay.” He said he submitted his resignation five years ago, when he turned 75, the canonical retirement age. However, the Vatican did not accept it then. He “reminded Rome about it recently,” Gracias said. His successor “comes with great knowledge, competence, experience and holiness of life,” he added.

An Indian archbishop says he is waiting for a response from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a week after seeking his intervention to stop harassment of Christians using laws that criminalize religious conversion. Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore told on Jan. 2 that he has “not yet received any response” to his letter to Modi’s office seeking he address some “pressing concerns of the Christian community” in India. Machado wrote to Modi’s Office on Dec. 23, seeking “five gifts” from the PM that would make the Christian community in India happy during Christmas. “We only apply and apply, hoping for a good response to our pressing concerns from the Prime Minister,” Machado said, expressing hope he will have a response. Machado told Modi that anti-conversion laws, currently in force in 12 states, are “distre-ssing, often leading to unjust persecution of Christians. “These laws, misnamed ‘Freedom of Religion Bills,’ impose stringent and unreasonable restrictions, violating personal liberty and human rights,” the letter said. He wanted Modi “to foster genuine freedom of religion by directing states to adopt a more tolerant approach.”
The prelate also wanted Modi’s inter-vention in “resolving the burning Manipur issue” of ethnic violence between Christian-majority Kuki and Hindu-majority Meitei groups in north-eastern India. He said Christians in Manipur have received a raw deal, but the prime minister has not visited the state since the onset of the civil unrest more than a year ago. Machado also wanted Modi to intervene and stop all attacks on Christians and their institutions. He noted that the Delhi-based United Christian Forum recorded 767 incidents in 2024 targeting Christians, and 80 Christians were jailed because of their faith in Christ. Machado also wanted the government to extend to Christians of Dalit origin the social welfare benefit guaranteed in the constitution for lower caste people. The government blocked Chri-stians and Muslims from receiving these benefits meant to help lower caste people on the ground that their religions do not approve of the caste system. Are Christians and Muslims “not citizens of this country with equal rights and privileges guaranteed to all in the country according to our constitution?” he asked in the letter.

More than 400 Christian leaders, including activists, lawyers and scholars, have urged India’s president and prime minister to take immediate action to address what they said was increased persecution against Christians. The appeal comes after 14 violent incidents against Christians were reported across the country during the Christmas season, a Dec. 31 statement from the group said. Statistics from the Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFIRLC) and the United Christian Forum (UCF) for 2024 highlighted the increase in violence Christians are enduring, the statement said. It said that between January and mid-December last year, more than 720 violent incidents were reported to the EFIRLC, while UCF recorded 760 cases by the end of November. The figures showed a steep rise in such incidents over the last decade, from 127 incidents recorded by the UFC in 2014.The UCF is an inter-denominational Christian organization in India that fights for the rights of the Christian minority.
A letter emailed on Dec. 31 to Indian President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi by 30 Church groups calls for immediate and decisive action to curb the acti-vities of violent mobs, terrorizing communities and tarnishing the image of the country. The letter was signed by A C Michael, a former member of India’s minorities commission, Supreme Court lawyer Sister Mary Scaria, and UCF President Michael Williams.

Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias and Christian leaders in Western Indian Maharashtra state have opposed a government pro-posal to bring worship places of all religions under the govern-ment’s control. “I am totally against this. It interferes with the religious freedoms guaranteed by the Indian Constitution,” Gracias, the Archbishop of Bombay, based in the state capital, told on Jan. 2. Last month, Rahul Narwekar, the speaker of the state legislative assembly, urged the House to consider a new law bringing religious places and properties of all faiths under state control. The cardinal said the state already exercises adequate control over Christian properties through its charity commissioner, an official who oversees the administration of churches’ properties and chari-table activities. “Besides, the Ca-tholic Church has more stringent measures to regulate affairs of the church than the government,” Gracias added.
Narwekar made the remarks while discussing changes in regu-lations for the management of Siddhivinayak Trust, which ma-nages a prominent Hindu temple in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the country’s financial capital. He said Indian secularism demands treating all religions equally, but people question the government controlling only Hindu religious places. “I think all religions should be treated equally, and as such, worshipping places of all religions should be brought under the control of the government,” he said. Gracias said the govern-ment is “floating this idea to gauge our response, but it will certainly create disturbance in our communities.”

Catholic leaders in India have lauded the chief minister of a southern state for raising the issue of falling birth rates in the world’s most populous country and urged the government to encourage couples to have more kids. “A young and vibrant population is an asset for any country and its decline is a matter of serious concern for everyone,” said Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) spokesperson Father Robinson Rodrigues. Andhra Pradesh chief minister, N Chandrababu Naidu, raised concern over declining birth rates in his own constituency and said last week that “India should not repeat the mistakes committed by other countries such as South Korea and Japan.” Naidu, who represents the city of Kuppam in the state legislature, was shocked to find the birth rate in his constituency had fallen to 1.5 – below the national average of 2. India’s current demographic dividend could last till 2047, but “if less than two children are born [per woman], then the population will fall [in the future],” the chief minister said. Naidu said the decline was “a worrying trend and needed a nationwide discussion on population management.”

A proposal to hold a Christian prayer service at the inauguration of a university in a northeast Indian state has been criticized by political leaders and civil society. Church leaders in Meghalaya, where Christians form a majority, advised caution and suggested upholding the nation’s secular tradition. The plan to “consecrate the Captain Williamson Sangma State University on January 13 by following Christian rituals” was announced by the state’s Education Minister Rakkam A Sangma recently, the New Indian Express newspaper reported on Jan. 5. The university, named after the state’s first chief minister, focuses on tribal studies and indigenous language preservation. “Ours is a Christian state. We want to consecrate the first state university with a massive prayer meet. If parliament can be blessed with Hindu rituals, why not Christian rituals in a Christian state?” Sangma reportedly said. The new building of the Indian parliament was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2023 by invoking Hindu gods. However, critics of Sangma’s proposal pointed out that a multi-religious prayer was also held at the new Indian parliament. Thma U Rangli-Juki, a non-government organization (NGO) in Meghalaya, said Sangma’s statement goes against the constitutional values of secularism. “Meghalaya may be a state where [a] majority of its population practices various forms of Christianity but that in itself does not make it a Christian state,” the NGO said in a statement. The state is home to people of several faiths and “the minister’s ignorant statement blatantly creates discriminatory conditions for the state’s other religions,” it said. The NGO demanded that the planned prayer service be cancelled immediately.

Christians in India will look upon 2024 as a year that challenged their faith and resilience with increased hostility, internal conflicts, scandals, power struggles, and natural cala-mities. Attacks against and harassment of Christians swelled this year amid growing hostility, particularly against those in remote villages of Hindu-dominated northern states, Christian leaders say. January through Sept-ember, Christians suffered 585 incidents, an all-time high, according to the United Chri-stian Forum (UCF), which documents violence against Christians based on the information they receive through its helpline calls.
Northern Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, has become the worst place for Christians as the BJP-led state government added more teeth to its draconian anti-conversion law in August. The amend-ment added a provision of life imprisonment or up to 20 years in jail for religious conver-sion and toughened the bail provisions. It also allowed anyone to complain about a law violation, changing the earlier provision that allowed only a victim of conversion or a close relative to do so. Uttar Pradesh reported 156 of 585 anti-Christian incidents, the highest among India’s 28 states to report such cases. Scores of Christians are arrested on charges of violating the anti-conversion charges. Several of them continue in jail, waiting for bail. In northeastern Manipur state, an ethnic violence that erupted on May 3, 2023, conti-nues between minority indigenous Christians and the Meitei Hindu majority. Christian groups accuse the state’s BJP-led government of supporting violence against Christians. The violence has so far killed at least 250 and displaced some 60,000, most of them Chri-stians who live in government shelter homes, clueless as to when they can return to their homes that are either in ruins or burnt down. With Hindu groups holding a firmer grip on political institutions, antagonism of Christians has spread across governing systems, with many taking legal measures to harass Christians and deprive them of the benefits they have enjoyed thus far. India’s Supreme Court on Nov. 7 backed a 2014 federal Income Tax Department order requiring nuns and priests working in government-aided Christian schools to pay tax on their salaries. The top court dismissed 93 appeals against the order.

The Catholic Bishops Confe-rence of India has expressed disappointment over the media spreading selective details of its officials’ closed-door meeting with Christian parliamentarians in New Delhi. “The selective dis-semination of details has created confusion and misrepresented the nature of the discussions held,” said the conference in an official statement on Dec. 13, ten days after the meeting in New Delhi. The conference president, Arch-bishop Andrew Thazhath, and other officials met with about 20 Christian parliamentarians on Dec. 3, including George Kurian, the federal minister of state for minority affairs. The Church officials included secretaries of different conference commissions. The bishops are “deeply dis-heartened by the breach of trust and the release of selective infor-mation to the media by an un-named source,” the statement said. The media widely reported, quoting unnamed sources, that the parliamentarians had asked the bishops to abandon their opposition to the Waqf (Amendment) Act. This act has allegedly become a tool for a Muslim charity to claim some 400 acres of land in Mu-nambam village in Kerala state. “These media reports are fig-ments of their imagination; there is no truth in them,” said Father Robinson Rodrigues, the confe-rence spokesperson. “We did discuss Munambam, not seeing it as an issue of a rift between Chri-stian and Muslim communities. It [the claim on the land] is a clear case of human rights viola-tion,” the priest told.

Narendra Modi created hist-ory on Dec. 23 when he became the first Indian prime minister to visit the headquarters of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) in New Delhi. The prime minister took part in the Christmas celebrations hosted by the bishops at the CBCI Centre premises. He also interacted with key leaders from the Christian community, including cardinals, bishops and prominent lay leaders of the Church. Addressing the program, Prime Minister Modi said Christ teaches love, harmony, and brotherhood and urged everyone to work towards streng-thening these values in society. He said attempts to spread vio-lence and cause disruption in society pained him. The prime minister stressed that only a hu-man-centric approach, as adopted by India, could take a 21st-century world to new heights. Citing the Christmas market attack in Ger-many and the 2019 Easter bom-bings in Sri Lanka, Modi said it is important to come together and fight such challenges. The prime minister recalled “a very satis-factory moment for me when we safely brought Fr Alexis Prem Kumar from war-torn Afghanistan a decade back.” Fr Kumar, a member of the Jesuit Refugee Services, was working in western Herat province of Afghanistan when gunmen took him into custody on June 2, 2014. It was PM Modi to announce the Jesuit’s release first through a tweet on February 22, 2015.

Christians in Madhya Pradesh state in central India have slammed an order from the state’s child rights body asking children to seek written permission from parents to participate in school events. Father Thankachan Jose, an academician based in Jabalpur diocese, said the order holds “an ulterior motive” of targeting Christian-run schools in the state that has seen a rise in hate crimes against the community in recent years. “This is an indirect way of targeting Christmas functions in our schools where children dress as Santa clause, wear Christmas caps, and join other events linked to Christmas,” Jose told . In a Dec. 12 order, the Madhya Pradesh State Commission for Protection of Child Rights directed schools across the state to obtain the parents’ prior written permission before involving students in various events or activities.
The order also states that schools should seek parents’ permission before children wear different dresses or are even shortlisted to play different characters. “The administration is trying to harass us by issuing such an order close on the heels of Christmas,” Jose told.