Police in a central Indian state have registered a fresh case of cheating and forgery against a Protestant bishop, who was dismissed from service last year following his arrest on charges of corruption and money laundering.
The Economic Offences Wing of the Madhya Pradesh state police registered on Sept. 3 a fresh case against P. C. Singh, former bishop of Jabalpur diocese of the Church of North India (CNI), a union of Protestant churches based in northern India.
The special wing dealing with economic offenses charged the former bishop and his aide Prem Massih with criminal breach of trust, cheating, forging documents, and criminal conspiracy while transferring the government land given on lease to the CNI.
The land in the heart of Jabalpur town reportedly carries a market value of 30 million Indian rupees (some US$361,000).
The CNI owns extensive land and properties across India inherited from the Anglican Church of the British era. The CNI was formed in 1970, uniting all the Protestant denominations active in northern India.
The CNI is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion and a member of the World Methodist Council.
In India, there is no fixed time frame for completing the trial. So, Singh’s case may take years to complete.
“Church leaders must stay above suspicion so that followers are not demoralized during the long trial,” said Daniel John, a Christian leader based in Madhya Pradesh.

The top court in a central Indian state has granted bail to seven Christians, including two pastors and a pregnant woman after they spent close to two months in jail for the alleged violation of the stringent anti-conversion law.
The Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Sept. 4 granted bail to Pastors Anil Chouhan and Suresh Dawar and five others, including 28-year-old Durga Mangilal who is pregnant.
“They were trapped in a totally false case,” Pastor Jayakar Kristi, who is following the case, told UCA News on Sept. 6.
The pastors visited a village in the state to conduct a meeting, but “it was dubbed as a case of religious conversion,” he observed.
“Their arrest and incarceration is totally in violation of the provisions of the anti-conversion law,” Pastor Kristi explained.
The pastors and other Christians moved the High Court after two lower courts rejected their bail applications, he added.
Advocate Umesh Manshore, who appeared for the Christians, told the court that under the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, the case has to be filed by the person who was being converted or by his/her close relatives. “Whereas in this case, the case was filed by a stranger,” Manshore told the court.
The High Court in its order said, “It is a fit case to grant bail to the applicants.”
The court, however, asked the Christians to furnish a personal bond of Rs.50,000 (US$607) each. “This is a clear case of gross violation and misuse of the anti-conversion law,” said Daniel John, a Catholic leader based in Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh.

Representatives of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church’s Synod of Bishops met  with clergy opposed to the introduction of a new liturgy, in a renewed effort to settle a dispute that eluded resolution for decades.
Vicars forane and members of the presbyteral council of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese meet with representatives of the Syro-Malabar Church’s Synod of Bishops in Kochi, India, Sept. 7, 2023.
The Sept. 7 meeting in Kochi, southern India, brought together members of a committee appointed by the Synod of Bishops — the Church’s authoritative governing body — and senior priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, who reject the new “uniform mode” of the Syro-Malabar Church’s Eucharistic liturgy.
The meeting addressed differences over the uniform liturgy, which the Synod of Bishops endorsed in 1999 as a compromise between the Syro-Malabar Church’s ancient liturgy, in which the priest faced east, and post-Vatican II celebrations in which the priest faces toward the people.
Tensions have surged since 2021, when the Synod of Bishops called for the new liturgy’s adoption by all the Syro-Malabar Church’s 35 dioceses worldwide.
The Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese — the largest and most prominent of the 35 — was the only diocese where the majority of priests and lay people rejected the change, insisting that after more than 50 years of use, the liturgy facing the people was an established practice that should be recognized as a legitimate variant.
But supporters of the new liturgy — who include Pope Francis — argue that its universal adoption would enhance the unity of the Syro-Malabar Church, the second-largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome after the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Pope Francis sought to kickstart the introduction of the new liturgy in the archdiocese — which has around 500,000 members — through the appointment of an apostolic administrator in 2022 and a papal delegate, Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, in July this year.
Vasil’, a Slovak Jesuit who previously served at the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, made a stormy visit to the archdiocese Aug. 4-22, during which he issued an ultimatum to opponents of the new liturgy, which they defied.

Catholics in India are urging the papal delegate to not weaponize Eucharist to enforce obedience among the dissident priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly arch-diocese in Kerala.
As Jesuit Archbishop Cyril Vasil’s threat of excommunication looms large on those dissident priests, Catholics in other parts of the country want the delegate to practice synodality promoted by Pope Francis to resolve the dispute over the mode of offering Mass.
The delegate, who landed in the southern Indian state of Kerala on August 4 to help resolve the decades-old dispute, ordered the dissenting clergy to offer Mass approved by the Syro-Malabar Synod in all parishes of the archdiocese or face excommunication. The deadline to implement the order is on Sunday, August 20.
Archbishop Vasil “seems to weaponize the Eucharist with his latest warning on the Syro-Malabar liturgy under the guise of obedience,” laments Father George Pattery, former president of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia.
Father Pattery, who is currently in Kolkata, urges the papal delegate to employ Jesuit expertise on discernment to help the Syro-Malabar Church discover true synodality and, if needed, revise its earlier decisions on liturgy, as “purity and pollution theories are questioned in the New Testament.”
“For Jesus, the eucharist should lead to washing one another’s feet, and not in ritual purity/pollution theories – something that Jesus strongly interrogated,” said the Jesuit, a native of Kerala.

The Delhi high court has ordered Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) weekly Organiser to take down an article alleging that the principal of a Delhi-based Christian minority school was exploiting nuns and Hindu wo-men and was involved in sexual activities with students, staff members and chefs, Bar and Bench reported.
The article titled ‘Indian Catholic Church Sex Scandal: Priest exploiting nuns and Hindu wo-men exposed’ was published in Organiser and another news plat-form, The Commune, in June.
Justice Jyoti Singh directed both publications to remove the defamatory article from their platforms.
It takes years to build a reputation, and therefore, the right to reputation has been recognised as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution, the bench observed, per the news report.
“No doubt, Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution provides the right of freedom of speech and expression to all persons, how-ever, it cannot be overlooked that the same is subject to restrictions under Article 19(2) which includes defamation.
The right to freedom of speech and expression cannot be taken as an unfettered right so as to defame and tarnish the reputation of another person. It has been repeatedly held by Courts that fundamental right to freedom of speech has to be counterbalanced with the right of reputation of an individual.”
The high court said that prima facie, Organiser and The Commune published the articles “in a reckless manner without any factual verification”, the report said. Additionally, the court said that the news coverage was harm-ing the reputation of the school principal. The principal is a well-regarded individual within the country and has affiliations with multiple educational establish-ments, it added. It noted that the school principal has presented a strong case in his favour. The principal said that as long as these articles remain in the public domain, there is a high likelihood that they will keep causing harm to his reputation.

As India celebrated its 77th Independence Day marking freedom from colonial British rule on Aug. 15, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) asserted the patriotism of Christians and called for “resolving internal challenges with empathy, understanding, and unity.” “India’s journey to freedom was not solely forged on the battlefield but also through unwavering determination, sacrifices, and visionary leadership from those of diverse backgrounds, including the Christian community,” the CBCI said in a press release. Though British imperialism spread in India when the East India Company began trading there in the 17th century, the British Parliament took total control over the Indian subcontinent in 1858.
Following the massive freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi – the prophet of nonviolence – the British ended their rule over the Indian subcontinent in August 1947, dividing it into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Hindu nationalist outlets, under the influence of the ruling BJP (the Bharatiya Janata Party, one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress), have called into question the patriotism of India’s 34 million Christians.

A Catholic bishops’ body has appealed the United Nations (UN) to intervene and stop the targeted attacks against Christians in India and neighbouring Pakistan. “Christians are increasingly becoming the target of riots and mob attacks in India and Pakistan,” said an Aug. 19 statement from the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) based in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
The call for UN intervention comes as Manipur state in northeast India is gripped by sectarian violence since May 3 while mobs targeted Christian homes and churches at Jaranwala in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Aug. 16 following allegations of Koran desecration.
In Manipur, violence has reportedly claimed close to 200 lives and displaced over 50,000 people, many of them now staying in relief camps and jungles. Two Christian women were paraded naked and one among them was gang raped.
Over a dozen cases of atrocities again women had been registered during the violence but the number of such cases could be higher and victims may not be able to register complaints fearing retaliation, Church leaders said. The violence also led to the torching of hundreds of Churches and other Christian institutions including schools.

Despite a dramatic threat by a papal delegate to excommunicate priests who failed to comply with orders about how to celebrate Mass from the governing synod of India’s Syro-Malabar Church, the deadline came and went Sunday with only a handful of parishes celebrating Mass in the prescribed fashion and one rebel priest actually suing the papal envoy in a civil court.
In the primatial basilica of the Syro-Malabar Church, St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ernakulam, a recently appointed vicar who attempted to celebrate the Mass in the prescribed fashion was turned back by protestors, and the vicar was forced to announce that Mass is suspended until further notice.
All told, estimates are that only six of 328 parishes in the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly actually obeyed the delegate’s warning.
The resistance came in the teeth of an ultimatum issued Aug. 17 by Slovakian Archbishop Cyril Vasil, a Jesuit and the former number two official at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Eastern Churches, who was appointed by Pope Francis on July 31 as his delegate to Ernakulam-Angamaly, where a swath of priests and laity have been in open rebellion for months.
Vasil had set Sunday, Aug. 20, as the deadline for priests to celebrate Mass in the fashion prescribed the bishops of the church, which envisions the priest facing the people during the Liturgy of the Word but turning toward the altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and warned priests who didn’t obey of possible punishments under church law.
Papal delegate throws down a gauntlet to dissidents in India’s Syro-Malabar Church
That edict has been strongly resisted in Ernakulam-Angamaly, where the custom is for the priest to face the congregation throughout the celebration.
According to a spokesperson for Almaya Munnettam, an association of priests and laity that has been spearheading the opposition, only six parishes actually conducted Mass Sunday in the prescribed fashion, and in another seven cases, Mass was interrupted in churches where there had been an attempt to celebrate according to the new system.
According to a statement, the association “congratulated the priests, more than 450 of them, who courageously stood along with 550,000 believers” in resisting the edict of the church’s synod and the papal delegate.

A Catholic priest in the Indian state of Goa was granted “anticipatory bail” Aug. 8 after police registered a criminal case against him for allegedly “hurting Hindu sentiments” in remarks he made about a Hindu king during a Sunday Mass in July.
Hindu groups had staged demonstrations in front of the police station calling for criminal charges to be brought against Father Bolmax Pereira, parish priest of St. Francis Xavier Church in Chicalim in the Archdiocese of Goa.
Pereira was quoted in the Mass posted on YouTube saying that 17th-century Hindu king Chatrapati Shivaji “was a national hero but not a god.”
“There are a few people for whom Shivaji has become a god … Yes, he is a national hero. We have to honor and respect him. What he has done, the battles he fought to protect his people … for all that he deserves respect. He is a hero, but not a god. … We have to have a dialogue with our Hindu brethren and ask them ‘Is Shivaji your God? Or a national hero?’ If he is a national hero, let it be at that. Don’t make him a god. We need to understand their perspective. If we live in fear, we will not be able to rise again,” the Indian Express quoted Pereira’s homily Aug. 5 after police filed a criminal case against him.
Hindu nationalist groups had shared the Catholic priest’s remarks on social media and carried out demonstrations demanding his arrest for offending their “religious sentiments.”
The police submitted in the trial court on Aug. 8 that “Father Bolmax Pereira is not required in custody in connection with the [case] registered against him in the Shivaji Maharaj [great king] row.”
Following this police response, the court accepted the priest’s plea for “anticipatory bail” in the case against him. As many as four cases related to the same incident have been registered against Pereira in four different police stations in Goa.
Goa, the tiny former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India, was evangelized by St. Francis Xavier, whose mortal remains are preserved in the Bom Jesus Cathedral. The number of Christians — most of whom are Catholic — has been steadily declining and now comprise a quarter of the state’s 1.6 million population. The state has been ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for more than a decade.
“Anticipatory bail” in the Indian legal system allows the accused to be released from police custody even if arrested for an alleged crime. In Pereira’s case, the court ruled that in the event he is arrested for the crime, he is to be released on a bond of 20,000 rupees ($240) and a surety.

A Protestant pastor in a northern Indian state has been attacked for allegedly conducting religious conversions.
Pastor Shyju Joseph was conducting Sunday worship on Aug. 6 at his place in Bihar state’s Nawada district. Members of the Bajrang Dal (brigade of Lord Hanuman), a Hindu nationalist organisation, disrupted the service after accusing him of converting people to Christianity.
“They asked him to accompany them and made him sit on a motorcycle. Later, he was beaten up badly,” Christian activist Minakshi Singh told UCA News on Aug. 7.
Singh, general secretary of Unity in Compassion, a charity based in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state, said, “As of now, no complaint has been filed.”
We have contacted our people in Bihar to help the victim register a police complaint, Singh added.
Police took him to Sharif Sadar Hospital in Nawada district where he was undergoing treatment for his injuries, she added.
“Pastor Joseph’s condition is serious but he is stable now,” the Christian lay leader said.
A member of Persecution Relief, an inter-denominational organization in India, criticized the state government for not filing a case against the pastor’s attackers.
“Are the attackers above the law of the land?” the member, who did not want to be named, said.
He said he has urged the state government to take tough action against the attackers.