As many as 56 Jesuits have lost their lives since their congregation made a commitment to promote a “faith that does justice” and foster reconciliation in society 50 years ago, says an official of the Society of Jesus.

“If we want to stand for justice, we have to pay the price. We have sacrificed many Jesuits and their collaborators as our forefathers worked hard to bring justice and reconciliation in the world,” said Father Xavier Jeyaraj, director of Jesuits’ Rome-based Social Justice and Ecology Secretariat.

Father Jeyaraj, a member of the Calcutta Jesuit province, was addressing around 220 conferrers and their associates in South Asia who have gathered in Delhi to celebrate the golden jubilee of their congregation’s commitment to justice.

“If we want to commit for future, be ready to pay the price,” he told the opening session of the September 26-27 program at Navjeevan Renewal Centre in Old Delhi.

Father Jeyaraj, who went to Rome in 2017 after four years of service as the secretary of Jesuits in Social Action in South Asia, said similar celebrations have taken place in various continents and all of them were occasions to review their ways, re-strengthen themselves to recommit to justice.

The bald and mustachioed diminutive Jesuit, who took up social justice seriously after a shock experience of witnessing the demolition of shanties in Mumbai in 1985, pointed out that the golden jubilee celebration takes place at a time when several crises that grip the world hinder the mission of justice and reconciliation.

“There is a crisis of democracy and leadership, a crisis rising from the growth of religious fundamentalism that destroys unity and harmony and a crisis of environment,” he explained.

He said many people in India cutting across religious and ideologies have paid the price for standing for truth and justice.

Despite guidelines supporting Dalit Christians – formerly known as “untouchable” – not every church leader is working in their defense, according to one Indian bishop.

“We still have to clean up our own house,” Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak told Crux. “In some places, sadly, the caste system is still there, in spite of us being Christians, and Dalit Christians suffer because of it still. It’s a very scandalous image of the church, but it’s there.”

“I don’t see so much of a hardship, but a continuation of persecution that we’ve faced. But we also have to trust in our judiciary system: If someone is accused of something, you have to go to the court.

Our challenge is that even in the case of the Khandamal violence, we had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get permission to help our own people, because the local judges wouldn’t allow us to. We had to fight it out.

That’s still happening today: We have to go all the way to the Supreme Court. This is the case of rights for Dalit Christians, that has been in the Court for over 15 years. They represent some 20 million people, who are suffering exclusion in the name of religion, but nobody seems to be taking it seriously and the government is lingering.

However, the information we have is that in the month of September there will be a hearing.

“At a bishops’ conference level, we released a series of policies on Dalit Christians, but in the end, it’s up to each bishop and each diocese to guarantee that these don’t remain as just a document. And on the bishops doing more at a local level, I believe there’s still much to be done. We still have to clean up our own house. In some places, sadly, the caste system is still there, in spite of us being Christians, and Dalit Christians suffer because of it still. It’s a very scandalous image of the Church, but it’s there.”

The Canonization process of the French Missionaries, Fathers Nicolas Michael Krick and Augustin-Etienne Bourry, who were martyred in Arunachal Pradesh 165 years ago, gained momentum with the constitution and inauguration of the Diocesan Board of Inquiry at St Peter’s Church, Tezu in Arunachal Pradesh. In the presence of Priests, Women Religious and a large number of people from around eastern part of Arunachal Pradesh, the new members of the Diocesan Board of Inquiry took oath to discharge their duties faithfully according to the norms of the Church, du-ring a solemn Eucharistic celebration at the Catholic Church in the capital town of Lohit District.

The work of the beatification of the two French Missionaries belonging to the France’s Societe des Missions Etrangeres de Paris (MEP) or the Society of the Parish Foreign Missions is actively promoted by the Bishop George Pallipparambil of Miao Diocese.

The two French missionaries were killed by Mishmi Chief of Somme village, bordering China, on their way to Tibet in the year 1854.

Nagaland’s Peace Channel plans to transform the Christian majority state in north eastern India into the happiest and most peaceful place in the country by 2030.

This was stated by the director of Peace Channel Father C.P. Anto in his keynote address at the 12th Peace Knit Fest 2019 celebration held at Don Bosco Youth Centre, Wokha town, 75 km north of Kohima, the state capital. The September 20 event addressed the theme “Transformed to transform.”

In order to achieve the dream, Father Anto stressed the need to move from micro identity of tribe, religion, caste, class and region to macro identity as human beings in which everyone would learn to accept and respect one another. The Catholic priest also encouraged all the participants to work collaboratively and pledge toward making Nagaland a peaceful State.

“In order to make the “Vision 2030” a reality, Peace Channel in collaboration with private college association of Nagaland and all Nagaland private school association wish to work towards achieving this dream in the days to come,” the priest stated.

A man wanted in the killing of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines has been arrested 20 years and nine months later. The sleuths of Central Bureau of Investigation nabbed Buddhadev Nayak on September 19 from Nischitapur village under Thakurmunda police station in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district.

Arunachal Pradesh has a literacy rate of 66.95 percent as per the 2011 census, with 73.69 percent being men and 59.57 percent women.

In 2001, literacy rate in Arunachal Pradesh stood at 54.34 percent of which male and female were 63.83 percent and 43.53 percent literate respectively.

One cannot but notice the sharp increase in the literacy rate in the north-eastern most state, bordering Myanmar and China. What are the contributing components of such a sudden improvement to the dismal situation ten years ago?

According to the education department, of the 11,153 students from 84 government higher secondary schools (GHSS) who appeared for the All India Senior School Certificate Examination (AISSCE) in 2018, only 4944 students had passed. In the All India Secondary School Examination (AISSE), of the 23,829 students registered, only 8270 passed. The government-run schools had a 21.22 pass percentage. The Newman Educational Society (NES) comes as a beacon of hope in this grim context of the dismal educational scenario of the State. NES has taken education to the last, least and the lost villages of Arunachal Pradesh.

Hundreds of men and women belong to various Catholic religious congregations have come to the streets of Kannur, a major city in Kerala, to protest what they said were biased media reports that tarnish their image.

“Do not belittle the life we have accepted with joy and pride. Religious life is not a matter of pain and distress,” the protesters said at the September 4 rally held outside the local office of the Mathrubhumi (mother-land), a Malayalam newspaper.

Most speakers were heads of several religious congregations for women.

Sister Emestina, superior general of the Dina Sevana Sabha (DSS, Servants of the Poor), deplored attempts by certain section of the media to use isolated incidents as an excuse to despise Catholic asceticism and portray priests and nuns in a derogatory manner. “We serve society with a smiling face forgetting our pain and sorrows. The face of Catholic religious life is contentment,” she asserted.

The DSS leader said Catholic religious men and women serve society with courage whatever the difficulties. “Our religious life is based on our love for God and it will not be affected how-ever much, some try to belittle it,” she added. Sister Mary Noble of the Franciscan Clarist Congregation termed media reports as deliberate attacks on Catholic religious life and urged their detractors not to force priests and nuns to come to the streets again. “We have organized this protest as a last resort as we have no other option left. We feel pity for those attacking us. They should undertake an unbiased study of what is happening around them to know how we live and what we do,” Sister Noble said.

Catholic officials in India have rejected accusations that a retreat centre in the southern State of Karnataka is promoting the conversion of Hindus.

Sharan Pumpwell, the secretary of the ultranationalist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad, called for the state government to shut down the Divine Call Centre in Mulki, claiming it was seeking converts by “insulting the Hindu religion.”

He also called on local police to press criminal charges against Father Abraham D’Souza, who heads the centre, accusing him of “forcibly converting” a local Hindu.

“Hindus and the Christians are living with mutual respect, love and peace. Some unwanted organizations are trying to destroy the peace and unity between Hindus and Christians by their involvement in conversions,” Pumpwell said.

D’Souza said the person in question came to the retreat centre on his own and was now “being manipulated by communal forces for their agenda.”

“There is absolutely no conversion. No baptism. He wants to come again too. This is false, baseless and motivated allegations,” the priest said.