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.

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.