The Kerala government has allowed Church groups and NGOs to resume religious and counseling services for prisoners in the jails of the southern Indian state.
The government revoked the March 31 order of Kerala Jail Director General of Police Bal-ram Kumar Upadhyay banning these groups from prisons following a meeting of Cardinal Baselios Mar Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Council of Kerala (KCBC), with state Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
A press note from KCBC spokesperson Father Jacob Palackapilly says the Jesus Fraternity that functions under the conference will conduct Maundy Thursday services in various jails in Kerala.
The police order had shocked the officials of the Prison Ministry India officials and Jesus Fraternity that have for decades visited jails to conduct religious services for prisoners and to offer them psychological help.
The police order came two days before the Church began the Holy Week rituals this year.
The press note says the chief minister has already informed Upadhyay the government decision.
Cardinal Cleemis on March 5 telephoned the chief minister twice to inform that it was injustice to deny prisoners’ right to seek help for psychological and religious needs.
Father Palackapilly termed as unjust the ban on the voluntary groups that offered help for the prisoners’ inner conversion and religious life.
The priest also said the Jesus Fraternity volunteers’ services have helped the growth of prisoners psychological and spiritual and encouraged them to return to normal life.
Earlier, the Prison Ministry India officials had expressed shock over the police order.
Father Martin Thattil, who coordinates the ministry’s services in Kerala, said they had per-mission to visit jails in the state until July 4.
Father Francis Kodiyan, national director of the Prison Ministry India, regretted the police order issued without assigning any reasons. However, it was applicable only to Kerala, he explained.

The newly appointed bishop of Mizoram says his main priority is to bring Barak Valley’s diverse ethnic communities together through focused pastoral care and help them work together overcoming all their challenges.
“I will visit every parish and in the Barrak Valley and work for peace and harmony among the people,” Bishop-elect Joachim Walder told in his first-ever interview after the announcement of his appointment.
Pope Francis on March 30 appointed the 67-year-old priest as the Aizawl diocese’s auxiliary bishop. The diocese covers the entire state of Mizoram and Assam’s Cachar, Hailakandi and Kaimkanj districts in northeastern India.
He is currently the episcopal vicar of Barak Valley region that covers Assam’s three districts.
Bishop Stephen Rotlunanga of Aizawl said the new bishop will address the pressing needs of the Barrak Valley. He recalled the Church’s several attempts to find a definite solution to the valley’s various issues.
The bishop-elect says he is willing to witness Christ in all challenges.

The Supreme Court of India has asked the federal government to formulate a national model for all states and Union Territories for managing menstrual hygiene for girls in schools.
The apex court on April 10 also termed the issue as of “immense importance” and urged the government to prepare Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, and Justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala appointed secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as the nodal officer to coordinate with the states and UTs and collect relevant data for formulating a national policy.
“At the present stage, we are of the considered view that Centre should engage with all the stake-holders for implementation of the Uniform National Policy with a leeway for the states and UTs to modify the scheme as per their local needs”, the Bench said.
It directed all the states and UTs to submit their menstrual hygiene management strategies and plans which are being executed either with the help of federal government funds or their own, to the Mission Steering Group of the National Health Mission.

Christian leaders in India have refuted Kerala-based Cardinal George Alencherry’s claim that Christians do not feel insecure under the rule of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the country.
“Persecution against Christians has drastically increased ever since BJP came to power in the country,” said A.C. Michael, president of the Federation of Catholic Associations of Archdiocese of Delhi
Michael was responding to an interview of Card. Alencherry, the head of the Eastern rite Syro-Malabar Church based in southern Kerala state, published by The New Indian Express, an English daily, on April 9th.
The cardinal who leads more than 5 million Catholics belonging to one of 22 Eastern rite Catholic Church, reportedly said that “Christians do not have any such insecurity now,” under BJP-ruled India and also praised the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
But Michael said the cardinal was wrong. “The fact is that there are continued waves of vile hate speech and targeted violence against the Christian community across the country,” Michael told on April 10.
Michael, a former member of Delhi’s state minority commission, said the atrocities against Christians continue to rise every year since the BJP came to power in 2014.
Quoting figures of the incidents of atrocities against Christians recorded by the United Christian Forum (UCF), he said 597 cases were reported from across the country in 2022 alone.
In 2014, 127 incidents of violence against Christians were reported, which rose to 142 in 2015, 226 in 2016, 248 in 2017, 292 in 2018, 328 in 2019, 279 in 2020, 505 in 2021, and 597 in 2022, according to a UCF report.
“There have been reports of 200 incidents of violence against Christians across India in the first 100 days of 2023 itself,” Michael added.

A two-day summit of delegates from 15 dioceses of northeastern India stressed the important roles women play in society.
“It is time that we stressed the equal importance of women in society, family and in the Church,” said Archbishop John Moolachira of Guwahati, the president of North East India Regional Bishops’ Council, said at the opening of the March 18-19 summit at the Jubilee Memorial Hall, Guwahati.
The women empowerment summit was organized by the Regional Women Commission of Northeast India.
“In Indian society including the Church, women play a secondary role. They are subjugated by father, husband, in-laws in the families and their bosses at the workplace,” the archbishop told some 450 delegates from the dioceses.
Women empowerment, he explained, “basically means treating men and women equally and giving equal freedom to women to develop her. Such gatherings are an impetus for women to assert their position in the family and to teach the society that wo-men have their rights and they are able to carry out their responsibilities well.”
Auxiliary Bishop Dennis Panipitchai of Miao, the commission chairman, said women empowerment means to increase and improve women’s social, economic, political and legal strength. “Em-powering women will ensure that her entire family receives better healthcare, nutrition, access to education, employment, economic justice and sustainability. The Northeast Region with all its uniqueness should lead and be the harbinger of the change that our country and the world is need of,” he added. The event included input sessions, animation and panel discussion on topics pertinent to women and daily challenges and discrimination they face in the society.

Maria was 9 and a fourth grader in a convent school when she tested positive for HIV.
She had lost her mother when she was just 3; her father, also an HIV patient, died last month in February.
Maria (name changed) recalled her father and the hostel warden bringing her 17 years ago to Jeevadaan (Life giver), an HIV/AIDS rehabilitation center managed by the Daughters of St. Camillus in the outskirts of Mangaluru, a southwestern Indian port city. “I was shocked and crying for leaving my friends,” she told Global Sisters Report.
Now married with a 2½-year-old son, Maria thanks the nuns for providing her care and support when everything seemed bleak.
“We are now positive about our life and our son keeps us occupied,” said Maria, who, with the intervention and support of Jeevadaan, married an HIV-positive young man.
The Catholic woman is among more than 400 HIV-infected women and children whom Jeevadaan has helped and who have settled into lives with jobs or marriage.
That’s because of the hope and confidence Jeevadaan teaches its beneficiaries, Maria said.
“With proper care and support, we could bring them up as normal children, giving them education at a public school and helping them settle with good education and jobs,” said Camillus Sr. Shiji Madathithazhe, who is in charge of education and has served the center for seven years.
“Our children have become smarter and healthier as they began interacting with the other children in the school,” she said.

A delegation of Christians of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh on March 21 met city Police Commissioner P. Jogdand regarding a spate of accusations and arrests for alleged forcible conversions.
The UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversions of Religion Act 2021 aims to stop conversion through allurement, coercion, force or fraudulent means. The law was implemented with retrospective effect from November 27, 2020.
Under the law, even an assurance of a “better lifestyle” or threat of “divine displeasure” is considered an offence. The act defines “mass conversion” as that of two or more persons. So even if a married couple converts it becomes a case of mass conversion.
Unfortunately, the provisions of this Act have been used to harass Christians across the State. Members of certain fundamentalist organizations have been complaining against prayer meetings being held in houses and pressurising the police to arrest those conducting such services.

Catholics across India have reacted angrily to an archbishop in Kerala, who has offered condi-tional support to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that heads the federal coalition government.
Archbishop Joseph Pamplany of Tellicherry on March 18 assur-ed the BJP at least one seat from the southern Indian state if the federal government raises the price of rubber to 300 rupees.
The Syro-Malabar prelate was addressing a farmers’ rally at Alakode, a village in the east-ern region of Kerala’s Kannur district where rubber is the main crop.
The Hindu nationalist BJP currently has no parliamentary or legislative seat in Kerala, where Christians form more than 18 percent of 35.77 million.
Archbishop Pamplany’s statement “cannot be accepted as the stand of Christians in Kerala, though there have been attempts by Christian leaders to align with the BJP,” says Father Suresh Mathew, editor of Indian Currents weekly.

India’s Supreme Court has restored the powers of Catholic bishops in Kerala to transfer diocesan properties and quashed a state court’s order that restricted them to dealing only with spiritual matters.
“The Supreme Court order setting aside the high court observations is a matter of great relief to bishops and the entire Christian community in the state [Kerala],” said Father Jacob G Palakkappillly, spokesperson of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, a regional Indian Bi-shops’ Conference.
The Supreme Court on March 17 said the state High Court’s order was “unwarranted and de-serve to be quashed and set aside, and are accordingly quashed and set aside.”
Kerala High Court in August 2021 held that Catholic bishops, notwithstanding their canonical powers, had no powers to alienate landed assets of their dioceses because their “powers are con-fined to religious and spiritual matters.”

In a verdict that will have far-reaching implications for minority Christian-run higher educational institutions in India, the country’s top court has ordered that while a minority educational institution is free to devise its own fee structure, the state has the power to regulate it.
The Supreme Court ruling came while hearing a petition that challenged the authority of a committee set up by the central Indian Madhya Pradesh state to regulate fees and admissions in minority-run higher education institutions in the state.
In its March 17 order, the Supreme Court said the minority institutions of higher education “should not claim complete immunity” in admissions and fee structures and “seek exemption from any interference” from the government.
The state established the committee in 2007 to fix the fees and supervise the admission process in the state’s private higher education institutions following complaints that these institutions were charging exorbitant fees.
The Church “accepts the verdict with mixed feelings,” said Father Maria Stephen, the Church spokesman in Madhya Pradesh.
He said Church institutions “do not fix admission fees and other fees with the intention of making a profit. Our aim is to provide excellent structures and modern facilities. The fee regulatory committee should not compare private institutions with government-run colleges,” he said.