More than 50,000 people on March 5 gathered at a Marian pilgrimage center in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, when it celebrated its feast two years after a gap of two years.
“We are here after the Covid pandemic to thank God who loves unconditionally and who is always willing to grant Mother Mary’s intercession for all of us,” said Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, the main celebrant of the feast day Mass at the Marian shrine in Partamaha, a small village in Odisha’s Kandhamal district.
The Divine Word prelate remembered Komoladevi, a local Hindu widow whose vision of the Blessed Virgin led to the setting up of the pilgrimage center in 1994 in the village, some 250 km southwest of Bhubaneswar, the state capital. She died of Covid-19 in 2020.
Father Mukund Dev, the parish of Our Lady of Holy Rosary Daringbadi and a member of managing committee of the shrine, said more than 50,000 people attended this year’s feast. The gathering included 55 priests and 25 nuns.
People gathering in such huge number is the sign of growing faith in God and accepting Mother Mary, the priest told Matters India.
Saraj Nayak, the secretary of development committee of the shrine, the people prayed for Mother Mary’s intervention to bring peace and harmony between warring Russia and Ukraine. “We also pray that the Vatican declare 36 Catholic victims of anti-Christian violence 2008 as martyrs of the Church,” he added.
The Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar comprises of nine civil districts of Boudh, Cuttack, Kandhamal, Kendrapara, Khurda, Jagatsinghpur, Jajpur, Nayagarh and Puri. It has 39 parishes serving around 70,000 Catholics. Kandhamal district alone has about 50,000 Catholics in 26 parishes including recently erected Sonpur and Barokhoma entrusted to the Capuchin priests.
The shrine was built after Komoladevi went to Partamaha Mountain to collect fire wood on March 5, 1994. She saw a bearded man in white dress and long hair coming closer to her. He disappeared after sometimes.
A beautiful woman from a distance called her and told her to request the local priest to build a church where people could pray the Rosary for the sinners to repent. The neighbors laughed at her when she first shared the experience .

Sister Prasanna Devi, a Catholic hermit nun who was an inspiration for many, especially Hindus, died February 27 in the western Indian state of Gujarat. She would have turned 89 on March 13.
Sister Devi was suffering from age-related illnesses for the past few years.
The death occurred at 2:33 pm at the parish presbytery of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Junagadh, a town in Gujarat where she had been staying for nearly a decade.
Carmelite Father Vinod Kanatt, the parish priest who looked after the nun, told Matters India that she was discharged from Christ hospital Rajkot two days ago. She was taken to the hospital on February 3 after her health deteriorated.
The funeral is scheduled at 10 am on March 1 in Junagadh.
Sister Devi had lived four decades among lions, panthers and other wild animals deep inside Girnar mountain range, the only home for Asiatic lions in India.
Devi does not belong to a particular religious order. She had chosen the contemplative life of an ascetic, devoting her life to God and sharing Christian blessings with thousands. She was the only female member of the Syro-Malabar Church to choose such a life.

A Christian hospital that has served a northern Indian city for more than a century faces closure after it became a victim of religious bigotry since one year.
The Broadwell Christian Hospital managed by the Evangelical Church of India (ECI) in Fatehpur has faced “physical, mental, and emotional abuse due to the false allegations of forceful religious conversions,” bemoans Sujith Varghese Thomas, the institutions senior administrative officer.
Fatehpur, a city situated between the Ganga and Yamuna rivers in Uttar Pradesh state, is some 550 km southeast of New Delhi.
Some Hindu nationalist groups have accused the hospital of indulging in forcible religious conversions, which the hospital authorities say are false allegations.
In “an open letter” to the media, Thomas claims the hospital that provides dedicated service in social development and healthcare has remained a “vital resource” for the local community for the past 114 years.
“For over a century, the hospital, its staff and its management have shared a fraternal bond with the community – something that goes beyond mere doctor and patient association. This bond is a deep two-way relationship of care, of trust, of service and of dignity – the metaphorical blood flow that has kept us connected, healthy, motivated and in service through the years,” adds the February 23 letter.

Indian police have arrested a Protestant pastor and his wife for allegedly indulging in religious conversions, say Christian leaders.
Police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where a sweeping anti-conversion law is in force, arrested Pastor Santosh John and his wife, Jiji John, on Feb. 26 based on a complaint by Bajrang Dal, an ultra-Hindu outfit.
“Pastor John and his wife were summoned in the morning for questioning and were freed later in the evening. But they were arrested after a mob protested in front of the police station,” Minakshi Singh, a Christian activist, told UCA News on Feb. 28.
John and his wife were holding a prayer service in a rented basement in Indrapuram in Uttar Pradesh near India’s capital New Delhi when the mob created a ruckus and accused them of religious conversion.
The couple appeared before a magistrate on Feb. 28 and were denied bail.
Singh, general secretary of Unity in Compassion, a charity based in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, said, “Pastor John and his wife are lodged in the Dasana jail in Uttar Pradesh.”
Police came under pressure from the administration, headed by Yogi Adityanath of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the Bajrang Dal, which is affiliated to the parent organization of the BJP, said Singh, who was seeking legal aid for the couple.
“Why should they arrest the pastor and his wife without any evidence?”

As many as 93 former civil servants have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about what they assay are recent increase in attacks on Christians in India.
Banded under the Constitutional Conduct Group, the retired bureaucrats, urged Modi in their March 4 open letter to reassure Chri-stians in the country that it will get equal and unbiased treatment from administration and the law.
“We are a group of former civil servants of the All India and Central Services who have worked in the Central and State Govern-ments during our careers. As a group, we have no affiliation with any political party but believe in impartiality, neutrality and share a commitment to the Constitution of India,” says the opening of the letter.
The bureaucrats say they write to the prime minister because they are “deeply perturbed” by the continued harassment, through speech and criminal action, of minority groups in the country by persons associated with your government, your party, organizations connected to it, and by mischief makers from amongst the public.
“While we are concerned about the hate crimes and speeches against all minorities, we write to you today about the steadily in-creasing ugly words and actions against a small religious minority, the Christians. Our Constitution clearly spells out that all citizens, irrespective of religion, are equal and have equal rights, but we are compelled to protest to you against the increasing incidents of outright discrimination against Christians occurring in recent times,” the letter adds.
The letter points out that although some groups accuse Christians of indulging forcible religious conversion, the community share in the Indian popular has remained around 2.3 percent since 1951.
“Yet, in the minds of some, this minuscule number poses a threat to the 80 percent of the population that is Hindu,” says the letter.
The accusation has made Christians and their institutions victims of verbal, physical and psychological attacks in various parts of the country. “It is an unfortunate but inesca-pable fact that there are elements amongst us who may feel that the denigration of others enhances themselves,” the letter bemoans.
Noting the contributions of Christians to the education and health sectors and social reform, the former civil servants said that India has been home to “Christianity since the first century CE, long before its intro-duction in many countries that are today predominantly Christian.”

The Catholic Church in the western Indian state of Gujarat state has sought police protection after one of its schools faced a ruckus by a right wing Hindu mob.
“We request you to take necessary action against such unruly elements and grant us police protection so that no untoward situation occurs in our premises or to any member of our institution,” Father Teles Fernandes, secretary of the Gujarat Education Board of Catholic Institutions, wrote to state Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel.
The February 20 letter also urged him to provide protection to St. Mary’s Higher Secondary School in Amreli, some 245 km southwest of Ahmedabad, the state’s commercial capital.
The mob on February 20 insisted installing the pictures of Hindu deities in classrooms and the principal’s office.
School principal Father Binu Kunnel told Matters India on February 22, “The crowd spent the whole day in the school campus insisting on their demand, however, did not unleash any violence.”
The principal also added that the ruckus seemed to be part of a planned operation to tarnish the school’s image.
Father Fernandes’ letter said the “unruly large group” comprised members of the vishwa Hindu Parishad (world Hindu council) and Bajrang Dal (Brigade of Lord Hanuman).

A Catholic social worker, who has campaigned against substance abuse for three decades, on February 15 received the first “Life Time Achievement award” instituted by a Jain center in Karnataka.
Dharmasthala conferred the award on Thomas Scaria, who heads the Ecolink Institute of Well-being, for his outstanding contributions to prevent and manage substance abuse.
Karnataka Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot gave away the award at a function at Dharmasthala, some 75 km east of Mangaluru, a port town in the southern Indian state. It comprises a citation, memento and a cash award of 25,000 rupees.
Veerendra Heggade, the Dharmadhikari (head) of Dharmasthala who instituted the award, pointed out that Scaria was the first recipient of the award. He congratulated the winner for his contributions to the community management of addiction and capacity building of the work force.
Scaria, who is also a senior journalist, has spent three decades in campaigning against drugs and alcoholism and training hundreds of addiction professionals globally.
The governor, a former federal minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, underlined the need for more committed people to work among drug users and alcohol dependents. “Substance Use Disorder is growing day by day, and only a movement can curb its growth,” he asserted.
Scaria started his mission on drug prevention in 1991 by initiating a students’ movement against addiction called Link Anti Addiction Action Group and later co-founding the Link Rehabilitation Center, where he served as its director for 20 years.
He joined Colombo Plan in 2010 and coordinated several projects in addiction management and capacity building in more than 25 countries for almost 10 years before returning to India.
Currently, he is engaged in training addiction professionals from nearly 20 countries as the approved training provider of the Colombo Plan and as a global trainer under the UNODC.

Several thousand voters belonging to religious minorities such as Christians and Muslims have been allegedly removed from electoral rolls in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, say Catholic leaders.
The state, where the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) runs the government, is headed for polls in May and Christian leaders suspect deleting minority voters could be a strategy to retain power.
A delegation from Bangalore archdiocese on Feb. 15 submitted a memorandum to the state’s chief electoral officer (CEO) saying a total of 9,195 voters’ names were removed from electoral rolls of the Shivajinagar constituency in the state capital, Bengaluru.
At least Some 8,000 names were of Christians and Muslims, the memorandum said.
“We fear that [voters lists for] many constituencies across Bengaluru city could have tampered with impunity. If such mischief is allowed to carry on unchecked, the confidence of the people in the electoral process will be destroyed beyond measure,” J. A. Kanthraj, public relations officer of the Archdiocese of Bangalore, told UCA News.

A Protestant bishop was remanded in judicial custody in connection with an alleged case of religious conversion in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
The family members of Auxiliary Bishop Paul Muniya of the Shalom Church in Jhabua district have denied the allegation and asserted that the prelate was charged with a fake conversion case.
A local court remanded Bishop Muniya in judicial custody on February 23 after he surrendered to the police more than a month after the case was registered against him.
He surrendered in compliance with an order from the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the top court in the state.
One Kailash Bhuria, a local resident, on January 11 filed a police complaint alleging that Bishop Muniya and Tita Bhuria, an elderly church member, in September 2022 invited him to a church and sprinkled some water on him and gave him a copy of the Bible and a cross.
When he refused to attend church services subsequently they threatened him. He also sought police protection and action against the bishop and the community member.
Kaleb Muniya, the prelate’s son, said his father was accused of violating the provisions of the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.
The police arrested and sent Tita Bhuria to jail soon after the complaint was filed on January 11.

In the wake of State Elections this month in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya, Chri-stian leaders from different parts of Assam and North East region calls on citizens in the region to remain alert on threats to the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of India and safeguards ensured therein to the people.
A meeting was held in Guwahati last on February 17 with a commitment to solidarity with one another and those who are discriminated against.
In the meeting, the leaders took note of incidents against Christians in the country which include hate-speeches, humiliation and violence targeting individuals and groups, destruction and desecration of property and places of worship.
“Brutality and crime like the murder of Graham Staines in Odisha more than 20 years ago, barbaric abuses of human rights against Christian communities in Kandhamal in 2008 and many innumerable more in different parts of the country especially in States where the ruling dispensation remain consensually silent against the perpetrators of these acts,” a press statement reads.
The Christian leaders also claimed that since the last few years atrocities against Christians and Churches have increased in numbers and intensity with many more cases going unreported, and the recent incidents in this region with the “authorised census” targeting Christian individuals, families and groups in Assam.
“In the guise of clearing encroachments on the forests, worship places are destroyed, eviction and displacement of Boro families and communities who are indigenous settlers have taken place and the majority of the members are Christians. Meanwhile, what cannot go unnoticed is that hundreds of acres of tribal land and resources are being handed over to persons and groups alien to the region which is an effort towards the economic exploitation of our region, especially the land and assets of the weaker communities by the dominating groups who are trying to gain control and power in targeted locations. A fear is being expressed about the sinister threat of removing the ST status from Tribal Christians and others which will effectively take away the constitutional rights and status of the indigenous citizen of the land,” the statement added.