Christian families in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand have been ostracized by their village for embracing Christianity. The three families from Mangapat Sirsai village in West Singhbhum district, who became Christian a year ago, are being pressurized to return to the tribal Sarna belief system centered on the worship of nature.
The gram sabha or village council on Sept. 17 decided that the converted families will not be allowed to use common properties for free movement or grazing cattle. They will also not be invited to any social gatherings in the village and nobody will interact with them.
Gabbar Singh Hembrom, district president of the Adivasi Ho Samaj Yuva Mahasabha, a youth organization of local tribal people, warned the villagers to abide by the decision or end up paying a fine.
A meeting will be held every Sunday to check if the decision to ostracize the Christian families was being followed strictly by everyone.
Hembrom said: “The entire village follows the Sarna religion except for Raut Bankira, Rajendra Bankira and Hiralal Bankira, who converted to Christianity along with their families a year ago. We are ready to accept them if they return to our faith, but they refused.”
Mangapat Sirsai has nearly 200 households with a population of around 700 people.
Hembrom alleged that some Christian missionaries were luring the tribal people with land and money to convert them.

The Goa-based Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth has elected Sister Berna Rodrigues as their ninth superior general. The election took place September 8, the last day of the congregation’s 12th ordinary general congregation held at St. Joseph Vaz Spiritual Centre, Old Goa.

India’s top court has dis-charged a Catholic priest from a religious conversion case, registered against him in central Indian Madhya Pradesh state three years ago.
Father George Mangalapilly, a professor at St. Ephrem’s Theo-logical College in Satna diocese, was charged with converting Dharmendar Dohar, a Hindu, to Christianity by offering him a bribe of 5,000 rupees (some US$70) and other benefits back in December 2017.
“Apart from the testimony of the witness, there is nothing else on record which could potentially be relied upon against the appellant,” wrote the top court in its order while discharging the priest from the case. The priest along with his 32 seminarians and another priest were taken into police custody on Dec. 14 as they were on their way to sing Christmas carols while visiting Christian homes, a tradition they followed for decades. The Hindu activists, mostly members of the Bajarang Dal, also blocked officers of the police station and demanded action against the priests and all the seminarians for attempting to convert Hindus and.They also alleged ulterior motives to carol singing.

More than 400 Salesian priests, brothers, sisters and young people spread over 19 regions are attending online the Salesian School of Social Communication (SSSC).
The program was opened on September 24 by Father Gildasio Mendes, the general councillor for social communication. 82 members of 12 Salesian provinces of South Asia region attended the online training session.
Introducing the vision and objectives of the year-long program, Father Mendes highlighted September 24 as a historically significant day for Salesian congregation. “We are commencing an important journey keeping in mind the evangelization mission of the Church to be achieved effectively through communication.”
As emphasized by different general chapters of Salesian Congregation, he said, communication is a priority dimension for Salesians. The Salesian School of Social Communication, an initiative of the Social Communication Department of the Congregation, Rome, envisages training all those involved in the social communication ministry, keeping in mind the priorities of the Church and the congregation.
The project further aims at preparing the participants to communicate from the Salesian perspective. The topics to be covered during SSSC are Biblical Dimension of Communication, Synodal Dimension of Communication, Salesian Dimension of Communication, Institutional Dimension of Communication and Youth Pastoral Dimension of Communication.

Four Missionaries of Charity nuns and two Indian Jesuit priests stranded in trouble-torn Afghanistan after the Taliban took control have been moved to safety.
Missionaries of Charity, a religious order of women founded by St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata, has thanked people for their continued prayers and support leading to the safe evacuation of the stranded nuns from the strife-torn country.
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan on Aug. 16, much earlier than expected by the international community. Among the four nuns, one of them is from India. Missionaries of Charity nuns started their mission in Afghanistan in 2004, three years after US-led forces freed the country from the clutches of the hardline Islamist group.
“Our four nuns have been shifted out of Afghanistan and are safe,” Sister Christy, based in Kolkata, the headquarters of the congregation, told on September 8. “We thank everyone who prayed and supported us in the hour of crisis.”
She refused to divulge any further details of the rescued nuns and their current location except to say that they are not in India.
However, Catholic News Agency report-ed that the nuns and 14 disabled children in their care were taken to Rome on Aug. 25 along with 277 other people on two evacuation flights.
“The children, aged six to 20 years old, were residents of an orphanage founded in 2006 by the Missionaries of Charity in Kabul, which has now been forced to close due to the Taliban’s takeover of the city,” CNA reported. Two Indian Jesuit priests — Father Jerome Sequeira, the head of the Jesuit mission in Afghanistan, and his assistant Father Robert Rodrigues — have returned to India from Afghanistan.
“Yes, our priests have safely returned to India,” a Jesuit priest told on Sept. 8. “They have completed their quarantine as per the Covid-19 protocol and are taking rest now.”

A court in Karnataka, south-ern India, has spared a Catholic Bishop from facing police inquiry into a land dispute.
The Sessions Court in Chik-magalur’s September 1 order observed the accusation against Bishop Thomasappa Anthony Swamy of Chikmagalur and a priest was false. A group of priests and lay people had earlier accused the prelate and Father A Shantharaj of selling a property attached a Church school by fabricating documents.
V T Thomas, the prelate’s lawyer, challenged the case and explained to the court that the plot in dispute was “never sold” and no manipulation of documents had been done.
Presenting proof of documents and minutes of the St Joseph’s Education Society that controls the property, the lawyer pleaded that the case filed by Michael Sadananda Baptist against the Bishop was “fabricated and without evidence.”
Thomas, the lawyer, told that a criminal case has also been filed with city police against Baptist “for cheating, tampering documents, mischief, and criminal conspiracy to tarnish the name of the Bishop and the Diocese.”

The liturgical dispute in India’s Eastern-rite Syro-Malabar Church has deepened after a section of priests opted not to follow a synod decision to have a uniform liturgical celebration in all 35 dioceses.
Some 300 priests of Ernakulum-Angamaly Archdiocese, the seat of the church’s Major Arch-Bishop, Cardinal George Alencherry, met their archiepiscopal vicar, Archbishop Antony Kariyil, on Aug. 28 and explained their decision, said Father Jose Vailikodath, a priests’ council member.
“We met Archbishop Kariyil and urged him to get a dispensation from Pope Francis over the synod decision so that we can continue with our traditional mode of celebrating Holy Mass, facing the congregation,” Father Vailikodath told on Aug. 31.
The bishops’ synod, the church’s supreme decision-making body, on Aug. 27 asked parishes in all dioceses to implement a uniform mode of Mass from Nov. 28. The synod had decided on a uniform liturgy in 1999 but the decision was not implement-ed in some dioceses following opposition from priests and laity.
Bishops who find it difficult to implement the decision should do it in a phased manner “through effective catechesis.” All dioceses should complete the process by next Easter Sunday, April 17, said the synod of the church based in southern India’s Kerala state in an official circular.

A handbook on a better understanding of ecumenism has been released by Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, the apostolic nuncio to India and Nepal, in India’s capital New Delhi.
The book titled May They All Be One: Ecumenism in Catholic Perspective has been compiled by the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) to help re-establish unity among all Christians. “The book proposes a common call for Christian unity made by the Second Vatican Council through prayer and dialogue. Adequate formation for the ecumenical dialogue needs to be fostered among all the churches in India,” Archbishop Girelli said during the book’s launch on Aug. 31.
Addressing members of the clergy, laity and faithful from different church denominations, the Vatican ambassador said that “the Church is open to ecumenical endeavor for the witness of unity among all people.”

The observations of a high court judge in calling for the cow to be declared India’s national animal have evoked mixed reactions from social activists.
Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav of Allahabad High Court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh made the observations on September 1 while denying bail to Javed, a Muslim man accused in a cow slaughter case.
Fifty-nine-year-old Javed was jailed in March for slaughtering a cow but his lawyer told the court that his client had been implicated in a false case.
“All circumstances must be considered and the cow should be declared as a national animal and cow protection should be made the fundamental right of Hindus,” the judge is reported to have said. Human rights activist A.C. Michael told that there is nothing wrong in declaring the cow as a national animal. “In fact, it should be whole- heartedly welcomed. The government of the day should immediately imple-ment the law to protect the cow.”
Michael, a former member of Delhi Minorities Commission, said Indians do worship the cow and depended on it for agri-culture and allied economic activities. The judge seemed neutral in his observations but the judiciary must also recognize the rights of those consuming beef.
“The law must not be misused by cow protection activists or private cowsheds built to show off and doing little to protect the cow, as the judge himself observed,” the Christian lay leader said.
Justice Yadav had said that the cow is known as the mother in the country and is worshipped as a goddess. “Cows give milk, which is needed for a strong and healthy constitution. It gives cow dung for fertilizers and urine that kills germs … It produces calf and oxen, which help in agriculture when they grow up,” he said.

Religious sisters from the Missionaries of Charity and 14 disabled children from an orphanage in Afghanistan arrived safely on Aug. 25 at Rome’s international airport.
A Catholic priest and five sisters from the order founded by Mother Teresa arrived on one of two evacuation flights from Kabul that landed in Rome on Aug. 25 carrying a total of 277 people.
Fr Giovanni Scalese, the ecclesiastical superior of the Catholic mission in Afghanistan, also arrived on the flight. He spent eight years in Kabul, offering daily Mass for foreign residents in the city at the only Catholic church in Afghanistan, located inside of the Italian embassy.
“I would never have returned to Italy without these children,” Fr. Scalese told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. We could not leave them there.”
The children, aged between six to 20 years old, were residents of an orphanage founded in 2006 by the Missionaries of Charity in Kabul, which has now been forced to close due to the Taliban’s takeover of the city.
Sr Bhatti Shahnaz, another Catholic religious sister who arrived in Rome on the evacuation flight, also worked with disabled children in Afghanistan with her community, the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide.
“The 50 intellectually disabled children we looked after are still there,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Fr Matteo Sanavio, the president of the NGO For the Children of Kabul, was at the airport to welcome the Catholic arrivals from Afghanistan.
“The first moments we shared were smiles under our masks,” Sanavio told Vatican News.
“We were able to embrace, and the first words we said to each other were: ‘We praise the Lord because He has done great things.’”
Italy has welcomed 2,659 evacuated Afghans, about a third of them children, according to the Italian Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini.