Bangladeshis are mourning a prominent American Catholic missionary who dedicated much of his life to the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts in the South Asian nation.

Holy Cross Brother Ronald Drahozal passed away at a retirement and treatment facility run by his order in the U.S. State of Indiana on Oct. 16. He was 81.

Brother Drahozal had been suffering from a range of ailments for years and had been in the U.S. since March for medical treatment.

It was Brother Drahozal’s work helping thousands of Bangladeshi youth fight drug addiction that brought him national and international recognition.

Bishop Gervas Rozario of Rajshahi Diocese, the vice-president of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Bangladesh, said Brother Drahozal’s death is a great loss.

Pakistani authorities have suspended the head teacher of a government school for assaulting a Christian student and abusing his mother.

Nusrat Shaheen was suspended on Oct. 22 after a complaint of discrimination against 12-year- old Sharjeel Masih by his parents.

Sharjeel, a fourth grader, was beaten and suspended for a week from the Government Boys Primary School of District Attock, Punjab province. The district education officer has launched an inquiry into the incident.

“I was just trying to turn off a running tap when the teacher grabbed me, called me churha (low caste) and asked why I had touched the tap and made it filthy. ‘This tap is not from the country of your mother,’ she said before abusing me. I had to sit outside the school for five hours,” said Sharjeel, whose father works in a military hospital as a sanitary worker.

His mother Farzana Ejaz recounted the humiliation of the incident to ucanews.com.

“I accompanied him to school the next day to apologize for any mistake committed by my son. She [Nusrat Shaheen] asked me to grab her feet for the mistake of my son and threatened that her brother, a police officer, would sell my younger daughter to a brothel,” said the mother of three.

The Delhi Minorities Commission has issued a notice to the North civic body over a circular issued by it for recital of ‘Gayatri Mantra’ in schools run by its education department. Chairman of Delhi Minorities Commission(DMC) Zafarul Islam Khan said the notice was recently issued to the education department of North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC).

The education department of NDMC has been asked to explain “why a circular has been issued to its schools to make students recite Gayatri Mantra in morning assemblies.

“Is this not against our secular policy and will this not cause division in the ranks of students and teachers as many belong to minority communities who may not like to recite mantras of religious nature,” the notice asks.

NDMC authorities have defended the move, saying recital of ‘Gayatri Mantra’ at schools run by the civic body was not mandatory.

The civic body runs 765 primary schools where around 2.2 lakh students are enrolled.

Chairman of Education committee of the BJP-ruled municipal corporation, Ritu Goel said she had no information about the notice issued by the minorities panel on ‘Gayatri Mantra’ but added its recital was not mandatory.

“We have already clarified, its not mandatory in our schools,” she said.

The Assam Christian Forum has condemned the vandalism of a statue of St John Bosco kept in front of the Bishop’s House in Tezpur, the cultural capital of the north-eastern Indian state.

This is another incident of increasing intolerance in Assam and it has “put us all in anxiety,” says Allen Brooks, spokesperson of the forum.

The Catholic lay leader said that “anti-social elements” vandalized the statue on September 29 night. The statue depicted the founder of Salesian congregations with two boys, but the miscreants broke the heads of the boys and made a gaping hole in the saint’s torso.

“It is shocking that such an incident has happened in Tezpur, which is considered the cultural capital of Assam,” Brooks told Matters India on October 2.

He said a First Information Report has been registered with the police. He also expressed the Christian community’s hope that the police would book the culprits soon and restore their faith and security.

Brooks recalled a similar incident in August 2015 when the saint’s statue was desecrated in Guwahati.

Assam is currently ruled by the coalition headed by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, the political arm of Hindu radical groups. Tezpur (city of blood), some 175 km northeast of the state’s commercial hub of Guwahati, is an urban agglomeration in Sonitpur district. It is the largest of the north bank towns of Assam.

A group of young people gathered in Mumbai on October 7  to celebrate Synodgy 2018, an event to help the young people of India participate spiritually in the Synod of Bishops meeting on the youth taking place this month in Rome. “Synodgy is celebrating this Universal event on the home ground,” said Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the Archbishop of Bombay. The cardinal is in Rome for the synod and sent his remarks in a video message.

“Stay high and excited in our faith in Jesus Christ. Synodgy is here to ignite you and inspire you to work together youthfully and faithfully even as we commit to listen to you, accompany you so that you make your choices and decisions which will bring you inner contentment, reveal the beauty and meaning of life and the Christian life,” Gracias said.

The event was taking place at St. Andrew’s College in the Bandra neighborhood, a center of Catholicism in Mumbai.

The event included a video presentation consisting of interviews with young people, who spoke about the relevance of the Church today and what they would do if they were made pope for a day.

Archbishop of Bombay Oswald Cardinal Gracias has said that Pope Francis is closely following the developments in the case of Jalandhar bishop Franco Mulakkal who has been arrested for allegedly raping a nun multiple times over two years. Cardinal Gracias, who is the president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) issued the statement on October 5 from Rome where he is participating in the Synod of Bishops on Youth. “The Pope is awaiting the results of the police investigation. We reiterated our confidence in the judicial system of India and trust that the full truth will emerge and justice will be done for all,” he wrote. Other Indian cardinals attending the meet include George Alencherry and Basilios Cleemis. They met with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, secretary of state, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and Cardinal Leonardo Santri, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches to share their thoughts on the matter of Bishop Mulakkal.

Christians in a tiny northern Indian district suffered at least 12 attacks in September that community leaders say were instigated by false accusations against missionaries over the conversion of Hindus.

Pastors were beaten up, faithful arrested and on Sept. 30 services disrupted in continuing violence allegedly carried out by Hindu groups in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh.

The rights group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) cited “false propaganda” carried in some media outlets about claimed miracles and allurements being used by pastors to win converts.

ADF official A.C. Michael told ucanews.com on Sept. 28 that pastors were arrested like terrorists at midnight, church goers had been threatened and arbitrary restraints were imposed on Christian activities.

He said this was generating “terrific fear” in the Jaunpur district, which is about 230 kilometres southeast of the state capital, Lucknow.

The rights’ group listed 12 incidents that occurred from Sept. 5-25, including attempts to inti-midate pastors into not conduct-ing church services.

Pastor Benjamin said such incidents had increased since the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power with a Hindu monk-turned-politician, Yogi Adityanath, becoming state Chief Minister in March 2017.

Nearly 80 percentage of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with 200 million people, are Hindus. Christians constitute only 0.18 percentage of the state’s population while Muslims number more than 19%.

  The Indian Women Theologians Forum (IWTF) has expressed solidarity with a nun who dared to complain against a bishop who allegedly had abused sexually for over a period of two years.

“We are pained that her appeals for justice in the Church were met with silence,” the forum said in a press release on October 1. It justified the nun’s move to complain to the police, saying she was “left with no option but to go to the civil authorities to seek justice.”

The forum said it was “appalled” at the way many within the Church heaped condemnation and contempt on her.

“Church leadership has failed to understand the impact sexual abuse has on a victim – the trauma that a victim had to undergo to process the abuse from someone who is a spiritual leader who takes the place of God in her life,” explains the press release signed by forum secretary Virginia Saldanha and members Kochurani Abraham and Sister Manju Kulapuram. The women theologians say they stand by the nun because the two years of sexual abuse have affected her mentally and spiritually.

Aggression and violence against Christians have been registered in recent weeks in Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India. This is what A.C. Michael, human rights activist, Christian and former member of the Indian Government’s minority commission says in an interview with Agenzia Fides. Michael states that the attacks are perpetrated by Hindu fundamentalist groups, in collaboration with local police authorities. The activist notes that in September 2018, in the district of Jaunpur, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, at least 12 incidents of violence against Christians occurred.

Some Protestant Christian Pastors were woken up in the middle of the night and arrested on false charges of “fraudulent conversions.” Roads leading to churches are controlled by the police with checkpoints. The believers are stopped and cannot go freely to church, “and the police force them to go home,” denounces A.C. Michael. Other Pastors are threatened and they have not been allowed to carry out service in church.

Among the incidents that occurred on September 5, police arrested Pastor Durga Pradesh and a crowd of 270 Christians from Jaunpur. On 11 September, after pressure from radical Hindu groups, the police arrested Pastor Rajendra Chouhan and seven other faithful, releasing them after three days. On September 13, a crowd of extremists interrupted a prayer vigil led by Pastor Ravindra. On the same day local Christian leader, Ram Milan, was beaten, and in another place, the police took into custody Pastors Ram Ratan and Thomas Osoof, who had come from Mumbai, and were leading a prayer assembly. The police also arrested Pastor Gulabchand along with three other faithful, releasing them the next day.

On 16 September, the police blocked all the roads leading to the church of Bhulandih and asked the faithful to return home, arresting four Christians and were released on bail three days later. Pastors Anil Kumar, Praduman, Deepak Kumar, Monu and Ravinder were also arrested while celebrating a religious ceremony and then released on bail on 18 September.

According to the 2011 census, Jaunpur has a population of 180,000, 88% Hindu, 12% Muslim, 0.11% Christians and other minorities. Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous and politically important state, with a total population of 200 million.

India’s Supreme Court has asked federal and state governments to comply with its two- month-old instructions to end mob violence and lynching, which activists say shows the government’s failure to check hard-line Hindu violence.

The country’s top court on Sept. 24 asked all state governments to file action reports on its July 17 directions for governments to check mob violence, especially those linked to acts by vigilante groups protecting cows, a revered animal in Hinduism.

“There is a collapse of governance and law and order. Since the government is not taking the court direction seriously, the court has to intervene,” said Father Denzil Fernandes, director of the Jesuit-run Indian Social Institute in New Delhi.

The court directions included using media to tell masses that the street violence and mob killings will attract legal action and punishment. In order to check violence, it also asked to appoint district level police officers to stop the spread of irresponsible messages and to punish police who derelict their duty.