A Catholic bishop was reportedly hospitalized in Tamil Nadu, southern India, after a group of Catholics attacked him over a land dispute. Police in Marthandam in Kannyakumari district have registered a case against 58 people for attacking Bishop Jerome Dhas Varuvel of Kuzhithurai and a security guard, Tamil newspaper the Daily Thanti reported on March 11. The attack took place the previous day at the bishop’s residence in Unnamalaikadai near Marthandam some 45 km southeast of Thiruvananthapuram, the Kerala State capital, which is the nearest major city.

Weeks after Pope Francis’ open admission of the issue of clergy abuse of nuns, reaction to his remarks remains muted among Catholics in India, where a progressive group of religious had raised the problem three years ago.

They urge the Pope not to stop with identifying the problem but to act firmly against abusers, especially in India, where a bishop has been accused of rape by a former superior general of a diocesan congregation.

“Pope Francis gives some hope, but nothing is percolating down,” lamented Holy Spirit Sr Julie George, one of the 75 signatories of a “letter of concern” the Forum of Religious for Justice and Peace sent to all bishops and major superiors in India in February 2016.

The letter brought to light for the first time in India the prevalence of sexual violence against religious women by priests. It bemoaned that the problem went unaddressed, allowing its perpetrators to go unpunished. “This cannot be tolerated anymore,” asserted the forum, which said it was forced to write the letter as its analysis of current challenges to religious life revealed issues that needed urgent attention by church leaders.

However, the letter seems to have had little impact in the past three years. The forum and other groups such as Save Our Sisters Action Council allege that Indian church leaders have ignored the nun’s complaints against Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar.

George, a lawyer, accuses the Indian bishops of ignoring the Pope’s call to show compassion to the victims of clergy abuse. “Instead, they side with the accused and even try to silence every voice of dissent against them,” she told Global Sisters Report.

The church leaders threaten those supporting the alleged rape victim with defamation suits and other tactics, George alleged, referring to a move by the Syro-Malabar Church mid-February to sue the officials of the Save Our Sisters Action Council who had organized a sit-in last September demanding Mulakkal’s arrest. Mulakkal has denied the accusations.

Fr Paul Thelakat, editor of Sathyadeepam (Light of Truth), a church weekly, agrees with the Pope that the recent scandals are God’s plan to cleanse the church.

“I am not afraid of this vulnerability bringing shame to our honour and respect. Look at the Bible. It tells stories of sin and salvation. Every scandal is converted to instance of God’s grace,” Thelakat told.

Religious and ethnic minorities in India continue to face violence at the hands of Hindu groups that support the federal government led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has failed to prevent or credibly investigate growing mob attacks on religious minorities and marginalized communities, said the report released in New Delhi on Feb. 19.

Some critics have even accused Modi of turning India into “a republic of hate.”

The BJP’s political leaders, since forming the federal government in May 2014, “have increasingly used communal rhetoric” that spurred violence from vigilante groups, it said. They have also vowed to protect cows, a revered animal in Hinduism.

“Mob violence by extremist Hindu groups against minority communities, especially Muslims, continued throughout the year amid rumors that they traded or killed cows for beef,” according to the report.

Between May 2015 and December 2018, at least 44 people — 36 of them Muslims — were killed across 12 Indian states. “Over that same period, around 280 people were injured in over 100 different incidents across 20 states,” the report stated.

It said there were 254 documented incidents of crimes targeting religious minorities between January 2009 and October 2018, in which at least 91 people were killed and 579 injured.

About 90 percent of these attacks were reported after the BJP came to power in May 2014, and 66 percent occurred in BJP-run states. Muslims were victims in 62%  of the cases, and Christians in 14 %. These include communal clashes, attacks on interfaith couples and violence related to protecting cows and religious conversions.

“A country’s government must understand that it should take care of the people irrespective of cast, creed or religion,” said Bishop Alex Vadakumthala of Kannur in the southern State of Kerala.

Catholic run schools and colleges from all over Garo Hills on February 20 remained closed as a mark of protest and condemnation against the frequent attacks on Catholic Parishes and institutions, by miscreants in some days ago. The shutdown protest was also aimed at demanding from concerned authorities the immediate arrests of the culprits.

As many as 100 schools and all colleges run by Catholic missionaries in Garo Hills including those under Don Bosco and the Loyola College at William Nagar remained shut on the day to show their unity in condemning the incidents.

Other schools like the Educere School in Williamnagar also closed down for the day to show solidarity. Schools along the road from Dadeng to Phulbari, Rongreng Model School and the Chidekgre Robinus T Sangma School also cooperated with the protest and remained closed.

The annual assembly of the Association of Franciscan Families of India (AFFI) ended on Feb 22 with a yearlong plan to revive the charism of their founder Saint Francis of Assisi. In the four-day event — attended by generals, provincials and other major superiors of Franciscans in India — marked the 800th anniversary of the meeting between St Francis with the Sultan of Egypt.

The Indian Franciscans plan to develop broad based dialogue — with God, with the poorest and with other religions – in the coming year.

The AFFI is a nationwide network of around 50, 000 men and women Religious who follow St Francis and St Clare. They serve society both in India and abroad as missionaries through 164 provinces from 55 religious congregations besides another network of laity under the Order of Secular Franciscans numbering 70,000. They work for the welfare of all, with special charism to be committed to the welfare of the least and the lost, through their apostolate of education, health and social uplift.

Marking 20th year of the gruesome murder of an Australian missionary and his two young sons in Odisha’s sleepy outback wilderness of Manoharpur in Keonjhar district, Skypass Entertainment released its first film on February 1 in the US.

The 112-minute film will be released in India in March and its Australian release is slated for April.

Narrating the story line, U.S. based director of the film Aneesh Daniel says, “As the social fabric of life in rural India disintegrates in the late 1990s, journalist Manav Banerjee (Bollywood’s Sharman Joshi of 3 Idiots) moves with his pregnant wife to the town of Orissa in hope of a better life and the promise of a lucrative career. When speculation mounts that local Australian missionary Graham Staines (Hollywood’s Stephen Baldwin of The  Usual Suspects) is illegally proselytizing leprosy patients, Manav agrees to investigate undercover for the newspaper. What he finds is a series of revelations that are difficult to fathom and even harder to explain, and Manav is forced to make a choice between his own ambition and the truth. In the end, his actions spark a tragic event that is felt around the world.”

The born again Christian actor Baldwin has over 100 movies to his credit. Actress Shari Rigby (October Baby) plays the role of Graham’s wife Gladys Staines. The film project took Wagh 15 years, faced much opposition and 3 attempts to complete the film which was finally released in 2017 in Hindi, English, Malayalam and Tamil. Dubbing is on for French and Portuguese language versions of the film.

A retired Supreme Court judge known for his compassion for the downtrodden has urged Christian priests and religious to refrain from amassing material goods but serve their people. “Priests and religious have to collect only what is left out after feeding the people. They have no right to amass without giving to the people,” Justice Kurian Joseph told a seminar on socially-oriented seminary formation, referring to the biblical account of Jesus multiplying loaves to feed the hungry.

The February 8-10 seminar was organized by Dharmaram College, Bengaluru, capital of Karnataka state. As many as 92 people, including rectors of major seminaries and seminary professors participated in the seminar on “Socially Oriented Formation in Major Seminaries.”

Justice Joseph was among several lay leaders who attended the seminar.

Addressing the opening session on February 8, Justice Joseph asked the seminary rectors and professors, “Are we concentrating on the “sheep without shepherd?”

He said the role of priests is to contribute to build the Kingdom of God. The core values of Indian Constitution: justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, are the values of the Kingdom of God, he clarified.

“You be the change that you want to see in others,” he said and asserted that priest and religious have to become the Bible in the context they live and work. “In order to become Bible the seminarians have to imbibe during the formation the qualities of conviction, commitment and zeal.”

Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India who addressed the valedictory session, urged seminary rectors and formators to train their students to become persons of compassion after the model of Jesus.

Ram Puniyani, former professor of IIT Bombay, who spoke on “Quest for a Civilized Society in the Context of Growing Religious Polarization, noted that the current fight is between democracy and Hindutva.

The South Asian Dalit Christian Conference is to be held at NBCLC, Bangaluru, South India, on Feb. 13–14. The topic chosen is “Dalits Witnessing Faith at the Cross Roads in South Asia and Christian Response.”

Participants include Dalit Religious, priests, bishops, leaders and activists across South Asian countries. Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, Vatican, will be the chief guest of the conference, said Fr Devasagayaraj M Zakarias, national secretary of the Office for Scheduled Caste/Backward Class under the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), the event organizer.

Other speakers who will address the gathering on the Dalit scenario and offer theological reflection are Jesuits Dr Selva and Dr Maria Arul Raja. Both of them are leading scholars on Dalits.

This will be followed by the sharing of the faith experience of Dalits in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore and Bangladesh, including Kandhamal anti-Christian persecutions 2008 survivors of Odisha, Eastern India.

The Catholic Bishops’ Con-ference of India (CBCI) Office for Scheduled Caste/BC (Dalits and Backward Classes) has welcomed the Andhra Pradesh’s bill to accord Scheduled Caste (SC) status to Dalit Christians.

Already some of the states have passed the same resolution in their assemblies. The resent one was by the Pondicherry assembly. Already the United Andhra Pradesh Assembly passed the resolution on Feb 7.

“Passing of the resolution in the assemblies to include Dalit Christians in the SC list is a sign that the State Governments support the move to include the Dalit Christians in the SC list. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh and his allies of other regional parties will play a great role in the formation of the next Central Government,” Father Devasagayaraj M Zackarias, national secretary of CBCI Office for SC /BC told Matters India. This gives a great hope to the Dalit Christians that the long pending rightful demand to be included in the SC list will become a reality.