A Catholic archbishop and 12 nuns are among thousands of persons who have tested positive for Covid-19 in India in the past days.

The nuns work at a church-run hospital in the north-eastern State of Assam. State officials sealed off their hospital and moved them to a government facility for treatment.
Retired Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore in southern India tested positive for Covid-19 on July 3 during a routine check-up at church-run St John’s Medical College. His condition is stable, the hospital said.

The prelate and nuns are among some 700,000 Covid-19 cases reported in India as of July 5. Some 24,000 people tested positive on July 5 in the worst single-day spike in the country. Close to 20,000 have already died.

India has been struggling to flatten the coronavirus curve since cases began to increase in mid-March. Since July, the country has been adding more than 20,000 infections each day, with more people testing positive even in villages.

A mission hospital in Assam’s Dibrugarh town was sealed after 12 Catholic nuns, including a doctor, was tested Covid-19 positive. The nuns and a domestic support working in the St Vincenza Gerosa (VG) Hospital were on July 4 found to be infected with the coronavirus.

The first to test positive was the superior of the VG hospital community, who had traveled to Guwahati, Assam’s commercial capital, some 445 km southwest of Dibrugarh. On July 31, she showed mild symptoms of fever and a bad stomach. This led to the testing of all residents of the community.
Although four others have tested negative, the local administration has declared the entire hospital area a contaminated zone.

Samples of all other inmates, staff, primary contacts and regular visitors are being collected and sent for testing at Regional Medical Research Centre, Dibrugarh.

Four of the nuns are senior citizens – Sisters Antonia Mampilly, 85, Eileen Almeida, 72, Michael Serrao, 82, and Martha Kochuparambil, 83.

Expressing shock over the developments, Bishop Joseph Aind of Dibrugarh said, “It is sad that the lifeline hospital of people in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh has now been sealed. My heart goes out to all the Sisters and the inmates of VG Hospital and I invite everyone to pray for their quick recovery from the disease and for the reopening of the hospital.”

In a note to the people in his diocese, Bishop George Pallipparambil of Miao in Arunachal Pradesh has asked them to pray for the sisters and advised everyone to take extreme care to avoid the virus and comply with the lockdown restrictions.

Catholic lay leaders in India have accused church officials of ignoring papal instructions to deal with sex abuse by trying to shield a bishop facing allegations of murder, womanizing and corruption.
Lay leaders Chhotebhai and Melwyn Fernandes urged the papal nuncio to India, Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, to take action against Bishop Kannikadass Antony William of Mysore in Karnataka State.

Chhotebhai is the convener of the Indian Catholic Forum and adviser to Catholic Church Re-form International, while Fernandes is general secretary of the Association of Concerned Catholics, a forum of laypeople in India.

Some 37 priests sought Bi-shop William’s removal from office a year ago. The priests accused him of financial corru-ption, fathering children and having sexual relations with several women.

Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai has explained the confusion that resulted in some laypeople leading funeral rites and accusing their parish priests of not attending the last ceremonies of Covid-19 victims.
The cardinal’s statement came after the media published reports about lay Catholics leading funeral prayers and blessing graves to bury their family members. The reports also accused priests of refusing to bury Covid-19 victims for fear of contracting the virus.

“The archdiocese wishes to make clear that from the very beginning of the lockdown” on March 25, the clergy have been “responding to funeral requests with care and compassion,” the cardinal said in a June 26 statement.

He said the archdiocese had asked parishes not to have public requiem Masses. It also asked for bodies to be taken directly to the burial ground “where all the funeral prayers can be said before the burial.”
Directions also advised limiting the number of mourners to the minimum and keeping police informed of the funeral. In a video message, Cardinal Gracias also asked his priests not to visit houses because of the lockdown rules. “There was no direction to the priests to keep away from funerals,” Fr Nigel Barrett, spokesperson of Cardinal Gracias, told UCA News on June 28.

There must have been “rare incidents of some priests failing to arrive at a cemetery” but “most of our priests attend funerals with sensitivity and compassion,” he said.

A Catholic bishop in India who donated one of his kidneys four years ago now wants to quit his bishop’s office to become a hermit.

Auxiliary Bishop Jacob Muricken of Palai in the southern Indian State of Kerala has applied to church authorities to relieve him from the bishop’s office to help him lead a simple monastic life.

The 57-year-old prelate told UCA News that he sent his application to the Synod of his Eastern-rite Syro-Malabar Catholic Church two years ago and is waiting for a decision. He is the first Indian bishop to make such a request.

Cardinal George Alencherry, the major archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church, has “promised to consider my case positively,” the bishop said.

A decision has been delayed because of the Synod, the decision-making body of the church, needs to get approvals from the Vatican to relieve a bishop from office, Bishop Muricken said.

The bishop maintains his decision to quit the bishop’s office comes from “an inspiration from God” and he will follow it provided he gets permission from the Synod and the Vatican.

“It is a special call within a call to become a monk and abstain from official life as a bishop and other administrative roles in the diocese. It is to become closer to God and nature,” he said.

The idea of leading a solitary life came to him in 2017, five years after he was ordained as auxiliary bishop of Palai. “Until then, I had no such desire.”

The bishop said he looks forward to spending “the rest of my life more in prayer and meditation and leading an eco-friendly life away from the hustle and bustle of the routines of a bishop.”

Even as a bishop, he spends long hours in prayer and follows vegetarianism. He gets up around 2.30am each day and spends three hours in personal prayer before joining others in morning prayers, people close to him said.

Bishop Muricken said he does not plan to join any existing monastic congregation. He wants to lead a secluded life in the hilly Idukki district without any assistance or helpers.

Catholic bishops in the southern Indian state of Kerala have urged the state government to enact stringent laws to curb misuse of social media after a nun’s picture was morphed and shared on social media with offensive slogans. Sister Lucina Porunnedam said a social media user altered one of her photographs holding a placard with a slogan against alcohol consumption. The morphed picture had anti-Church slogans.

“It is a deliberate attempt to defame Catholic nuns and portray the Catholic Church in a poor light,” she told UCA News.

She lodged a police complaint on May 18 seeking action against the social media user.

Sister Porunnedam, who co-ordinates an anti-liquor campaign in Tellicherry Archdiocese in Kerala, is a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart.

The accused used offensive slogans against Catholic nuns and priests, she said. “The morphed photo also took pot shots at Christ and belittled Catholic priests,” the 45-year-old nun said.

Millions of internal migrants – most of the day labourers with little savings – were trapped far from home with little money when the lockdown was declared on March 24 with just a few hours’ notice. There have been over 118,000 cases of the corona virus reported in India, with over 3,500 deaths. The hardest hit State is Maharashtra, which has over 41,000 cases and nearly 1,500 deaths.

In the State’s capital Mumbai, the St Catherine of Siena School and Orphanage has been distributing lunch and breakfast to the stranded migrants, the poor and the homeless in and around the suburb of Bandra, a traditional Christian area of the city.

Brother Joseph Sebastian, the director of the institute, said this was in keeping with the founder, Father Anthony Elenjimittam (1915-2011), who affectionately called the destitute and orphan children under his care “Angels in Rags.”

A Catholic bishop in a southern Indian diocese has set an example of social responsibility even during the lockdown.

Bishop Prince Antony Panengaden of Adilabad in Telangana State rushed to Mittapally, a village in the Mancherial district, when he heard that a fire had destroyed the house of Shankarayya, a paralytic and father of nine.

The fire incident occurred on May 19 and the bishop came to know it the following day when he called the residents of Mittapally as part of his pastoral duty of inquiring about his faithful.

The village has only ten Catholic families and the bishop visits them often.

Bishop Panengaden knew Shankarayya, the father of six girls and three boys, could not go for work because of his physical disability. The family survives on the earnings of the sons, who are daily wagers. On May 20 itself, the prelate visited the village, 18 km away from his residence, to study Shankarayya’s condition.

On his return from Mittapally, the prelate formed a team of priests, youth and other villagers to help Shankarayya.

“Fire incidents are common in those villages mainly due to the faulty electrical wiring,” Bishop Panengaden told Matters India over phone on May 24.

He said he formed the team as the diocese has no funds to build the house. He then suggested the team to help Shankarayya through physical work.

“Our diocese has no money, so we can’t provide any monetary help to people. What we could do is to help them through our physical work,” he added.

The bishop went with his team to the village in the early morning of May 22 and started the house’s foundation work. Besides the bishop, the team comprised five priests, seven young people and a few local villagers.