The Vatican Congregation for the Oriental Churches has appointed an apostolic visitor for the Kerala-based Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament (MCBS).
An October 13 letter from the Apostolic Nunciature in Delhi to MCBS superior general Father Joseph Maleparampil said Rome has appointed Carmelites of Mary Immaculate Father Paul Achandy as the apostolic visiror to the 87-year-old congregation.
The appointment, done with Pope Francis’ knowledge, is “Ad Nutum Sanctae Sedis,” a Latin term meaning “at the disposition of the Holy See.” It refers to any circumstance involving a conflict of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, where Rome decides to take the matter under its own jurisdiction and reserves to itself the right to make a final judgment on the matter.
Father Achandy is currently the chancellor of the Bengaluru-Based Christ University. He is also the rector of the Dharmaram College, a major seminary managed by his congregation adjacent to the university.
The 57-year-old priest took over as the vice chancellor on September 21.
He is an alumnus of Dharmaram College and former staff of the university when it was a college. The congregation was raised to the pontifical status on December 2, 1989. The congregation has two provinces– Kottayam and Kozhikode – in Kerala and region, Satara in the western Indian State of Maharashtra.
The two places the congregation works outside the Kerala are Shimoga district in Karnataka and Satara and Solapur districts in Maharashtra. It has missions also in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, a residences in Italy and Germany. Its priests work in Australia, North America and the Philippines.
This is the second time this year that Rome intervenes in the administration of religious congregations in India. On May 16, the Claretian congregation replaced its Bangalore provincial with a Vatican official as the delegate of the superior general.

 UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on October 20 appealed to the Indian government to safeguard the rights of human rights defenders and NGOs, and their ability to carry out their crucial work on behalf of the many groups they represent.
Bachelet expressed regret at the tightening of space for human rights NGOs in particular, including by the application of vaguely worded laws that constrain NGOs’ activities and restrict foreign funding.
“India has long had a strong civil society, which has been at the forefront of groundbreaking human rights advocacy within the country and globally,” the High Commissioner said. “But I am concerned that vaguely defined laws are increasingly being used to stifle these voices.”
Bachelet, a former president of Chile, cited as worrying the use of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), which a number of UN human rights bodies have also expressed concern is vaguely worded and overbroad in its objective. The Act prohibits the receipt of foreign funds “for any activities prejudicial to the public interest.”
The Act, which was adopted in 2010 and was amended in September this year, has had a detrimental impact on the right to freedom of association and expression of human rights NGOs, and as a result on their ability to serve as effective advocates to protect and promote human rights in India.
It is expected that the new amendments will create even more administrative and practical hurdles for such advocacy-based NGOs. Most recently, Amnesty International was compelled to close its offices in India after its bank accounts were frozen over alleged violation of the FCRA.

A Christian group in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh is mulling a protest after the state government prevented construct-ion of a church because it says it was illegal.
Arunachal Christian Forum (ACF) has asked the state govern-ment run by the pro-Hindu Bha-ratiya Janata Party (BJP) to qui-ckly resolve the issue in Buddhist-majority Tawang town.
“The present government says that the church is illegal as it is on public land, referring to the Supreme Court order that bars construction of religious structures in public places, but that is not the case here,” Father Felix Anthony, spokesman for the Catholic Church in north-eastern India, told.
“People here who are for or against the construction of the church are not for disturbing the peace of the community that has been prevailing for years. People want the issues sorted out ami-cably. There is no question of disobeying the law written in the constitution.”

Several bishops in Kerala held a day-long hunger strike October 20 to protest the state govern-ment’s withholding of funds from Catholic schools.
The hunger strike was held October 20 in front of the Kerala state secretariat. The prelates participating were Bishops Jo-shuah Kizhakkeveettil of the Syro-Malankara Eparchy of Mavelikara, chair of the Kerala bishops’ education commission; Paul Mullassery of Quilon, the vice chair; and Thomas Tharayil, an auxiliary of the Syro-Malabar Archeparchy of Changana-cherry.
Archbishop Maria Callist Soosa Pakiam of Trivandrum said the state government “curtails our rights as a religious minority to run education institutions through arbitrary orders and amendments to the existing laws,” UCA News reported.
Christians run about 5,000 of Kerala’s 13,000 schools. The government is required to provide financial aid to over half of these schools to support teachers’ salaries.
Father Charles Leon, secretary of the Kerala bishops’ education commission, told UCA News that “it is an indefinite protest.” Protests were held in each of Kerala’s 14 districts.
He also said the state government tried “to meddle in the appointment of teachers in the state-aided schools.”

A special court of the National Investigation Agency on October 23 rejected the bail plea of Jesuit Father Stan Swamy a tribal rights activist arrested for his alleged involvement in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon violence in Maharashtra.
The 83-year-old, who is under judicial custody, had sought bail on health grounds. He is now lodged in the quarantine ward at Taloja Jail, near Mumbai.
Father Swamy was picked up from his home in Ranchi, Jharkhand, on October 8 by a team of NIA officials from Delhi. His arrest had sparked an outrage across the country, evoking criticism from several circles. A court had sent him to judicial custody until on October 23.
“It (the NDA government) crossed all limits today when someone like Stan Swamy was arrested. He is someone who has been working in Jharkhand for years, in the remote faraway villages, wandering in the jun-gles, just so that the Adivasis, Dalits, and minority populations here could be reached,” Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren had said.

Archbishop Felix Toppo of Ranchi on October 16 joined priests, nuns and lay people to form a 5-kilometer human chain to denounce the arrest of an octogenarian Jesuit priest for alleged Maoist links. Many of the more than 1,000 protestors, who lined up in the Jharkhand State capital of Ranchi lit candles, terming it a symbol of hope against the attempts to silence intellectuals and rights activists such as Father Stan Swamy. The 83-year-old priest was arrested on October 8 from his residence near Ranchi by the National Investigation Agency, the federal body to counter terrorism. The priest was taken to Mumbai the following morning.

The arrest and imprisonment of an 83-year-old Jesuit priest in a two-year-old case have led to massive protests by people’s organizations, activists, intellectuals and concerned citizens from across India.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), a federal body to counter terror activities in the country, on October 8 arrested Father Stanislaus Lourduswamy from his residence at the Bagaicha Campus near Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand State in eastern India.
According to the latest information, the agency on October 9 took the priest to Mumbai, in western India, and presented him before a court that sent him to judicial custody until October 23.
The arrest of “Stan Swamy is a gross violation of human rights and democratic norms,” says an October 9 statement endors-ed by more than 2,000 people representing various groups in India.
They have appealed Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren to oppose the priest’s arrest. The statement hailed Father Swamy as “a valued and public spiritedness citizen who has worked for Adivasi rights since decades in Jharkhand” and decried the “inhuman and insincere act of the NIA authorities.”
The priest’s arrest, it adds, “stands out for its sheer vindictiveness” since the priest had “fully cooperated with the investigating officers” who questioned him at his residence for more than 15 hours in July and August.
“Stan has consistently denied any link with extremist leftist forces or Maoists. He had also clearly told the NIA that some so-called extracts allegedly taken from his computer shown to him by the NIA were fake and fabricated and that he disowned them,” the statement explains.
NIA officials reportedly said investigations established the priest was actively involved in the activities of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). The agency also accused him of receiving funds for CPI-Maoist activities.
The agency said they had seized documents and propaganda material of the Maoist and literature from the priest and that he was in contact with the other accused in the Koregaon-Bhima case that dates back to January 1, 2018, the day of the bicentenary celebrations of the Bhima Koregaon battle.
The celebration was marred by violence leading to death of one person and injuries to several others. Dalits and higher-caste Maratha people clashed in several parts of Maharashtra.

“In every democratic country, politicians’ freedom and power are defined by the constitution and, of course, their ability to be credible. After a special court ordered the acquittal of hardline Hindu leaders from a conspiracy charge of bringing down a 16th-century mosque in 1992, most opposition leaders went silent or were guarded in their reactions.” Wrote Nirendra Dev in New Delhi
In India, a multi-faith and multi-language country, secularism took a beating on Dec. 6, 1992, when Hindu zealots demolished the Babri Masjid. They argued they were undoing the act of 16th-century Muslim ruler Baber, who built it after razing a temple at the spot in Ayodhya town, the birthplace of their Lord Ram in present-day Uttar Pradesh State.
Starting in the 19th century, there were several conflicts and court disputes between Hindus and Muslims over the mosque. The disputes came to a flashpoint in 1992 when L.K. Advani of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began a roadshow demanding the mosque’s demolition and the building of a temple at Ayodhya.
Following the demolition, Hindu-Muslim riots followed in which some 3,000 people died. Advani, as leader of the opposition in India’s parliament (Lok Sabha), took the moral high ground and resigned. The Congress party, which was running the government in New Delhi then, dismissed BJP governments in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Fast forward to Sept. 30, 2020: Advani and a host of other hardline BJP politicians were acquitted by a special court that heard the conspiracy case…..”

A group Christian women theologians in India has expre-ssed shock and pain at the increasing incidents of sexual assaults on young Dalit women in the country.
“We strongly condemn these acts of violence and call upon the state machinery to ensure a free and fair probe into these crimes so that the guilty are brought before the courts of law and justice ensured to the victims/survivors,” says the Indian Women Theologians Forum (IWTF).
In an October 7 press release, the forum deplores the rape of four young Dalit women in Uttar Pradesh districts of Bulandshahr, Azamgarh, Balrampur, and Hathras in September. On Sept-ember 18, another Dalit teenager was set on fire in Telangana state’s Khammam district for resisting the rape attempt of her employers’ son.
“It is time for every right-thinking Indian to raise their voice and demand justice for the Dalits in our country. It is time for each of us to examine our own attitudes and behaviour that continues to treat Dalits as second class. It is time for India to change,” the Christian women theologian assert.
“We are deeply pained that even 70 years after the birth of India’s egalitarian Constitution framed by Dr. B R Ambedkar… Dalits continue to be treated as sub human,” the forum statement bemoaned.
Ambedkar, an eminent jurist, economist and politician, who had himself suffered caste discrimination, ensured that his strong views on social develop-ment, communal harmony and eradication of caste are spelt out in the various articles of the Indian Constitution.