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.

The high court in India’s Chhattisgarh State has ruled that the tribal status of a person will not alter if they change their religion to Christianity, stressing they can still enjoy state concessions aimed at improving the life of indigenous people.

The ruling was handed down as the court dismissed an election petition against Amit Jogi, the son of former state chief minister Ajit Jogi. The petition was put forward by Sameera Paikara, a member of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Amit Jogi won a seat reserved for tribal candi-dates in the 2013 state elections, but his victory was challenged by Paikara who took it to court.

Paikara argued Jogi could no longer claim tribal rights because his family converted to Christianity. “It can be presumed that even if the respondent adopted Christianity, his right of status of the Kanwar tribe cannot be taken away,” the court ruled on Feb. 1.

Hard-line Hindu groups — with BJP backing — have opposed Christians converted from tribal communities enjoying government benefits such as the reservation of seats in elected bodies, educational institutions and government jobs.

Members of the Yuva Sena, the youth wing of the Shiv Sena, a hard-line Hindu party, vandalised a Catholic School in Kolhapur, Maharashtra.

The Holy Cross High School for girls, in Nagala Park, is run by Holy Cross Sisters. The school principal reports that the pupils who, along with the teachers were witnesses to the attack, are in a state of shock.

The vandalism “is shocking in itself but is also indicative of the more strident confrontation that fundamentalist groups plan for religious minorities in the run up to the general elections,” said John Dayal, general secretary of the All India Christian Council. The attack by the “youth wing of the Shiv Sena, which is an ally of the ruling BJP, is a matter of grave concern,” he told AsiaNews.

The incident took place on January 22 around 1.30 pm (local time), during class time. School principal Sr Bharati told Indian Catholic Matters that about 20 activists forced their way into the school shouting slogans against the school management. They ransacked the office, breaking windows and damaging religious items, including the cross and the statue of Our Lady.

“They complained about the fees and started abusing me and the staff,” Sr Bharati said. “When I asked them to stay calm and offered to discuss the issue peacefully, they started breaking the office furniture and the glass windows.”

In the evening a complaint was filed with the police. Kolhapur Superintendent of Police Abhinav Deshmukh said that two people were arrested whilst another 18 are on the run. The police also deployed some agents to protect the school, which is closed for now.

“Ours is a school for girls,” Sr Bharati explained. “The attack was so sudden and heinous, that the students from the lower classes were trembling with fear and are still in the state of shock. It was a traumatic situation and we could do nothing except watch the act of vandalism.”

The Hindu Jagran Manch, a Hindu right-wing group, claimed that 98 Christians belonging to 23 tribal families were “reconverted” to Hinduism in Tripura.

The people, mostly tea garden workers hailing from Bihar and Jharkhand, had been converted to Christianity in 2010, Tripura unit president of the Hindu Jagran Manch Uttam Dey said.

“This is like a return of lost family members to their own home. They were Hindus, but were lured into Christianity after the Sonamukhi tea garden in Unakoti district, where they were working, was closed in 2010,” Dey told reporters. He said most of converted persons belong to Orao and Munda tribal communities.

The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) was also associated with the reconversion programme that took place here in Kailashahar district, around 180 km from State capital Agartala, on Jan 20.

VHP Unakoti district secretary Madan Mohan Goswami said it was ‘Ghar Vapsi’ for the people.

Birsa Munda, one of the reconverted, claimed that they were lured towards Christianity but later treated badly by those who had convinced them to convert.