Capuchin Father Suresh Mathew, editor of Indian Currents, a leading Church publication in the country, has been transferred to Punjab as a manager of a school.
A November 5 message from Father Raphie Paliakara, the new leader of the Capuchin’s Krist Jyoti province, says Father Mathew will take charge as the guardian and manager of St Joseph’s School in Bhrariwal near Amritsar on November 30.
Father Suresh Mathew, the outgoing editor of Indian Currents weekly, says the Church should not identify with regre-ssive and repressive governments as its mission is to stand with the oppressed masses with little voice to raise their demands and grie-vances.
The 50-year-old Capuchin priest regrets that journalism is at peril as fascist tendencies gnaw at the fourth pillar of the largest democracy in the world. Journalists’ prophetic voices that once kept governments on tenterhooks have turned feeble.
He says his role model is Saint Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carme-lite priest, who stood alone against the Nazi regime that exterminated people by poison gas or shooting. “Titus Brandsma would probably be the only journalist-saint in the family of the ‘holy persons,’” he says.
In an interview with Matters India, Father Mathew shares his days with Indian Currents and his expectations from media people, especially Catholic journalists:” Speaking truth to those in power is always risky. John the Baptist was beheaded for speaking truth to the king. Oscar Romero was killed for confronting the powerful establishment.
“Indian Currents was established to speak the Christian con-science to the secular society. Hence, I could not compromise on the vision of the founding fathers and my predecessors. Moreover, a follower of Christ can never align with fundamentalist, fascist regime nor keep silence over their policies. If anyone is supping with the devil, no doubt they are either too diplomatic or have skeletons in their cupboard. They must read the Bible, especially the book of Prophets and the Gospels through the eyes of a follower of Christ, rather than through the eyes of a ritualist. The Church had many daring personalities in its chequered history.”