A Muslim filmmaker’s two new movies with references to Jesus in their titles have taken a communal turn in southern India’s Kerala state, with a section of Christians viewing them as part of a larger plan to belittle Christ and Christians. Director Nadirsha began to face opposition after he announced his movie Eesho (Not from the Bible). Eesho and Yeshu stand for Jesus in the state’s Malayalam language. “We will not let this movie be screened anywhere in Kerala,” said politician P.C. George in a video post on Aug. 5, projecting it as part of a “well-orchestrated and deep-rooted conspiracy to malign Christianity.”

Police recently arrested nine Christians in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly violating the state’s controversial anti-conversion law, which criminalises religious conversion and denies bail to those accused.
The case is cited in a study by International Christian Concern (ICC), a Christian advocacy group, which reports a recent rise in anti-Christian complaints.
The document quotes one of the Christians, Sadhu Srinivas Gautham, who said that about 25 Hindu radicals stormed a prayer meeting last Sunday in Gangapur town, accusing those present of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity.
“They raged against me,” Gautham said. “It was as if they wanted to kill me on the spot. However, police arrived and escorted us to the police station” where he and six other Christians were charged with violating the anti-conversion law. “They told us we should renounce our Christian faith and go back to Hinduism.”
According to the anti-conversion law, approved last February, “Ghar Wapsi” (homecoming), the reconversion to Hindu-ism, is not forced conversion, even if it is often accompanied by threats and intimi-dation.
According to the ICC, 30 Christians were arrested so far this month; that is up from previous months.

Many parishes of Agartala diocese in the north-eastern state of Tripura on July 25 celebrated the first World Day of Grandpa-rents, declared by Pope Francis.
“Our parishes have traditionally been celebrating the Senior Citizens Day on the Sunday prior or after the feast of Saints Joachim and Anna, the grandpa-rents of Jesus. This year we are celebrating it as World Day of Grandparents and elderly people as suggested by the Holy Father, Bishop Lumen Monteiro of Agartala told Matters India.
Pope Francis instituted the world day for the elderly through a letter dated May 31. The Pope wants the annual celebration on the fourth Sunday in July, close to the feast of the Blessed Virgin’s parents.
Assuring the senior citizens, the Pope said, “I am well aware that this Message comes to you at a difficult time: the pandemic swept down on us like an unexpected and furious storm; it has been a time of trial for everyone, but especially for us elderly persons.”
Pope also said he wanted to celebrate the day, in this particular year, as a long period of isolation ends and social life slowly resumes. “May every grandfather, every grandmother, every older person, especially those among us who are most alone, receive the visit of an angel.”

A Catholic priest in Tamil Nadu’s Kanniyakumari district was arrested July 24 for spreading hate and enmity between religious groups. Father George Ponnaiah, parish priest from Panavilai, triggered a row by allegedly making disparaging remarks about ‘Bharat Mata’ and Hindu religion. The Kuzhithurai diocese condemned his comments made on July 18.
Addressing a meeting at Arumanai in protest against the closure of churches, the ban on conducting prayers in houses and the denial of permission for renovating or constructing churches on private ‘patta’ lands, he alleg-ed remarked about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
According to Father Ponnaiah, M.R. Gandhi, a Bharatiya Janata Party legislator from Nagercoil, was responsible for the Mandaikaadu communal riots in 1982. He said the DMK’s victory in the assembly election was the “alms given by the Christians and the Muslims.”
His speech was condemned, among others, by State Minorities Commission chairman S Peter Alphonse.

An Indian Muslim billionaire businessman, based in United Arab Emirates, has come forward to help build a Protestant church in its capital city of Abu Dhabi.
Yusuff Ali Musaliam Veettil Abdul Kader, popularly known as M A Yusuff Ali on July 23 donated 500,000 dirhams (US$136,147 or 10,138,771 Indian rupees) for the construction of a worshipping centre of the Church of South India in Abu Dhabi. Ali is the chairperson and managing director of Lulu Group International, a multinational conglomerate company that operates a chain of hypermarkets and retail companies. Church of South India parish in Abu Dhabi Father Lalji M Philip received the check from Ali.
The church will be built on 4.37 acres of land donated by Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces and the de facto ruler of Abu Dhabi.

Media reports claim that Israel-made spyware Pegasus was believed to have been used to track more than 300 Indian phone numbers including those of journalists, politicians, government officials and rights activists.
The Israeli cyber weapon company NSO Group was also fined in 2019 for hacking phones of around 1,400 users around the world, including 121 Indians.
“It is completely unethical as we have the fundamental right to privacy given by the constitution of India and spying on someone’s private life is a threat to the citizens of a democratic country,” Bishop Salvadore Lobo of Baruipur, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India’s office of social communications, told. “We can understand when the government sometimes spies on some social elements when it thinks that they pose a threat to national security, but targeting only some particular group or person is unacceptable and the government should investigate the latest issue.

Pope Francis on July 16 appointed Fr Deepak Valerian Tauro, rector of St Albert’s College in Ranchi, as the auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Delhi.

The Bombay High Court bench on July 23 withdrew its oral observations praising the late Father Stan Swamy and even appreciating his work for society.
The bench of Justices Sambhaji Shinde and Nijamoo-din Jamadar withdrew their co-mments after the National In-vestigations Agency (NIA) took strong objection to the “personal comments of the bench.”
The bench was hearing the pending plea of Jesuit Father Swamy by which he had sought interim bail on medical grounds before he died.
On July 23, senior counsel Mihir Desai appearing for Swamy told the judges that he seeks four prayers i.e. to allow Father Frazer Mascarenhas to participate in the Magistrate enquiry in Swamy’s custodial death, to direct the Magistrate to submit its report before the judges and to follow the guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on custodial deaths.
The last request that Desai made was that the enquiry should be done by a Magistrate in Mu-mbai. However, the NIA through additional solicitor general Anil Singh opposed the request. The ASG said that the court shouldn’t give directions particularly to follow the NHRC guidelines and also to submit the enquiry report to the bench.
“Moreover, we think that the appeal should be abated as he (Swamy) is no more,” Singh argued.
Countering the submission, Desai pointed out that even if Swamy isn’t here but the HC does have it’s “supervisory po-wers” and thus the appeal cannot be abated.
Aruna Kamat-Pai, the chief public prosecutor for the state said she agreed with the submi-ssions of the ASG over guide-lines, monitoring the enquiry etc. “As far as enquiry in Mumbai is concerned the state will take care of it,” she submitted.

Hindu activists in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh have disrupted a prayer service and threatened two Christian pastors in the space of three days for alleged religious conversion.
In the first incident on July 4, Pastor Firoz Bagh was conducting a prayer service at his house in Raipur, the state capital, when 30-40 Hindus surrounded the house and started shouting anti-Christian slogans.
Police took the pastor into custody but released him after a few hours after the intervention of church leaders.
On July 7, Pastor Ramesh Manikpur of Sarora Gogaon was resting at his house in the evening when a Hindu group wrote a slogan hailing Hindu gods on his boundary wall.
“They accused me of religious conversion and even slapped my son. They were around 100 and passing through our lane in a religious procession,” Pastor Manikpur told.
Pastor Moses Logan, president of the Chhattisgarh State Christian Welfare Society, told that they had faced similar situations
in the state but things were brought under control after the intervention of the administration.
“It is matter of concern and worry for us as some fanatic group members take us for granted and don’t even hesitate to harass and attack us in the name of religious conversion, which is not true,” he said.
“I spoke with Pastor Bagh and he said he has to visit the police station every other day for the investigation. He is very much worried for his family and his faithful. I hope the investigation is over soon.”
Pastor Logan said Pastor Bagh told him that after police took him to the police station, a mob even surrounded the police station and started shouting anti-Christian slogans and accusing him of forced conversions.
“The mob say they will not allow him to conduct any prayer service in the area in near future,” Pastor Logan said.

Sacramental blackmail, clergy sexual abuse, clericalism and property disputes are among challenges facing Catholic women religious in India, an international webinar was told.
The July 10 meeting organized by Voices of Faith, a Rome-based international network, discussed the findings of a Conference of Religious India survey conducted among the leaders of the women religious in the country.
Around 370 nuns, priests and laypeople from many English-speaking countries, Germany and Italy attended the two-hour program.
The survey was commissioned in 2018 by the women’s section of the Conference of Religious India, the national association of religious major superiors in the country, after media reports indicated widespread exploitation of nuns in the Catholic Church.
A four-member team conducted the study in 2019-20 and published the findings as a book in June this year.
“It is a landmark document,” Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, a laywoman theologian who coordinated the webinar, said of the book. “For the first time, we have hard data that cannot be discounted. Women religious from across India have courageously called out the exploitation they experience in the church.”
The book lists these problems faced by the Indian nuns: low wages, disputes over property, harassment from priests, refusal of sacramental celebrations, and verbal abuse in person and from the pulpit.
The issues discussed in the book were earlier discounted, Gajiwala says, lest they invite “the wrath of powerful priests and bishops,” adding the concerns “are finally out in the open.”
The India conferences of both bishops and religious have not responded to the survey or its findings.
The 86-page book titled It’s High Time: Women Religious Speak Up on Gender Justice in the Indian Church, was written by a three-member team led by Sr. Hazel D’Lima, former superior general of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.