The Kerala High Court on June 23 granted bail to a Catholic priest and a nun who have been sentenced to life imprisonment in the sensational Abhaya murder case.
The division bench of Justices Vinod Chandran and C Jayachandran acted upon the petitions of Father Thomas Kottoor and Sister Sephy seeking suspension of their life term.
The court asked the two to deposit 500,000 rupees each and refrain from leaving Kerala without the court’s permission.
Earlier in December 2020, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Court had sentenced the priest to two life terms besides a fine of 500,000 rupees after conviction under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
Sister Sephy was also convicted and handed down life imprisonment under the same section in addition to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for tampering with evidence under Section 201 (destruction of evidence).
After a prolonged legal battle, the CBI court had found them guilty of murdering Sister Abhaya, whose body was found March 27, 1992, inside a well at a con-vent in Kottayam, a town in Kerala. The trial court had allowed the discharge petition of another alleged accused Father Jose Puthrikkayil.
Address casteism at thanksgiving for Devasahayam: Dalit group
The Catholic Church in India should seriously address the existence of casteism within its fold as it organizes a national thanksgiving prayer for Saint Devasahayam, says the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement.
The Church in India will on June 24 hold the prayer service from the tomb of the newly canonized India’s first lay person at St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral of Kottar, Tamil Nadu.
An open letter from the Dalit movement agrees to celebrate Devasahayam’s canonization is quite fitting, but what is “more important and necessary is to invoke the true spirit of his martyrdom.”
The June 23 letter signed by M. Mary John, the movement’s president, urges the Church not to treat the thanksgiving “only as a spiritual exercise or religious ritual” but as an occasion to introspect about the conti-nuing oppression and discrimination of its Dalit members.
“This occasion should be a call to the Catholic Church to stop this. This is also important in the context of the call by Pope Francis for Synodality in the Church,” it adds.
John says the saint was martyred because he converted to Christianity defying the then prevailing oppressive and discriminating caste system. Saint Devasahayam became “a true witness” to Christ’s values and mission.
“He stood up firmly against the caste hegemony of the ruling class of the then kingdom of Travancore in South India,” the letter explains.
The movement says Devasahayam was martyred for the same cause that the movement now demands.
The global Christian community, it says, is ignorant about continuation of the caste oppression and discrimination even three centuries after Devasahayam’s times and that its “worst victim” is the Dalit Christians.
“But even after so many years, casteism, caste oppression and discrimination continues in the Catholic Church itself, which need to be challenged on this occasion,” the letter asserts.
The letter further says the movement has raised this issue “vociferously in recent times. But this truth will be suppressed and hidden by the glitters of the celebration, liturgical services and rituals scheduled to be led by the top members of India’s Catholic hierarchy.”
It wants the hierarchy in India to use the thanksgiving occasion to own up the existence of casteism in the Church and resolve to take steps to eradicate it.
Church music hits right note in Bangladesh
For more than three decades, Ruma Brizita Biswas had sung several popular liturgical and devotional songs with incorrect notations and lyrics because nobody taught her the correct versions.
“One of my favorite songs is Jishu ghrinar rajjye enechho tomar prem (Jesus, you brought your love to the kingdom of hatred), but I had been singing it incorrectly all my life as ‘Jesus brought love to your kingdom of hatred.’ The same happened to other songs as well,” Biswas, a Bengali Catholic, told..
The 40-year-old is choir leader of St. Joseph’s Cathedral Parish of Khulna Diocese in southern Bangladesh. The parish has about 5,000 Catholics.
A church-sponsored mu-sic training program in national capital Dhaka has helped her correct her wrong lyrics, she said.
Biswas was one of 50 participants in the national training on liturgy and church music by the Catholic bishops’ commission for liturgy and prayer at Holy Spirit Major Seminary from June 3-9. They included two priests, 11 nuns and laypeople representing eight Catholic dioceses of Bangladesh.
Mongolian mission challenges African nuns
For Sister Tireza Gabriel Usamo, a 38-year-old Catholic nun from Ethiopia in Africa, the climate and customs of Mongolia have been a constant challenge ever since she went there as a missionary. She is part of a three-member team of nuns from Consolata Missionaries working in Arvaikheer town in central Mongolia. The Church in Mongolia was re-established when three Immaculate Heart of Mary missionaries arrived there in 1992, a year after democracy was restored after the fall of communism. The Catholic Church was active in Mongolia in the 13th century but its role was ended by the Yuan Dynasty in 1368. Christianity was then for-bidden in a country sandwiched between China and Russia.
As the Church marks 30 years of its reincarnation in 2022, it has two Mongol priests, 22 foreign missionaries and about 35 missionary nuns including Sister Usamo. They work for some 1,400 Catholics under the Ulaanbaatar Apostolic Prefecture, which covers the entire country of some 3.3 million people. Ulaanbaatar’s Italian Bishop Giorgio Marengo is among 21 bishops that Pope Francis will make cardinals in a consistory in August. Bishop Marengo, also a Consolata missionary, met the pope in May with a team of Buddhists in an effort to promote interfaith collaboration in Mon-golia.
Japanese Catholic toils 40 years on world’s tallest Marian statue
An elderly Catholic sculptor in Nagasaki, Japan, is all set to complete and install the world’s tallest wooden statue of the Virgin Mary after four decades of time, energy and money.
Eiji Oyamatsu, 88, a Catholic from Fujisawa, Kanagawa prefecture, will unveil the 10-meter wooden statue of Mary with the child Jesus at the end of June, reported Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
The statue pays tribute to thousands of Christian martyrs of Nagasaki in the 17th century.
The single-handed effort by Oyamatsu encouraged a group of volunteers to form the Citizens’ Association for Minami-Shimabara World Heritage in 2018. The group from Nagasaki prefecture has bought land to install the statue to honour the martyrs of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion, aiming to turn the site into a popular shrine.
The revolt, mostly by local Catholic peasants, stemmed from grievances over excessive taxation and abuses by officials of the Shimabara peninsula and the Amakusaretto islands. It was brutally crushed by the 120,000-strong army of the military government of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The suppression between 1637 and 1638 left about 37,000 Christians dead and effectively ended Christianity in Japan until its revival in the 19th century.
The purge forced all remaining Christians to renounce their faith publicly. However, many Christians continued to practice their faith secretly and came to be known in modern times as kakure kirishitan (hidden Christians).
“It seems fateful that I set about this work without being commissioned by anybody, and the statue will now be hosted in a place that deserves it the most.”
Putin’s senseless war hurts the poor of Asia, Africa
Russia’s invasion is causing inflation and threatening millions of people who depend on Ukrainian produce
The savage war of Vladimir Putin against the peaceful people of Ukraine is the work of a man with ambitions bent on trying to secure his place in Russian history as the leader who restored the false “glory” of the Russian Soviet Union that disintegrated in 1989. There was no glory there but oppression, occupation of half of Europe and a Cold War that threatened nuclear annihilation of the world.
Putin’s massively destructive war, with continuous atrocities and war crimes, is now threatening another form of annihilation — that of millions of people in Asia and Africa who depend on Ukrainian wheat, maize and cooking oil as do other poor nations of the world.
The Russian president has blocked the export of millions of tons of Ukrainian cereals and cooking oil from Odessa on the Black Sea. He wants sanctions lifted before he will lift the blockade. In the meantime, evidence has emerged that Russia is stealing Ukrainian grain and shipping it to Crimea and then to Syria. It is a war tactic to starve the world and force Western nations to lift sanctions while millions go hungry and many die.
Ukraine was exporting 4.5 million tons of agricultural produce per month through its ports on the Black Sea. There are around 20 million tons of grain stockpiled in silos and there will be no storage facilities available for this year’s harvest of wheat, barley and grapeseed. Despite the war and the departure of up to 5 million Ukrainians, the farmers have continued to plant crops but have nowhere to store them. The sales are needed for national survival.
Afghan Christians find new hope in Pakistan
Three days before the Taliban seized control of Kabul, Arifa Rahimi received a threatening phone call. “You have been traced. We know that you are a Shia kafir [infidel] and a journalist reporting against us,” said the unknown caller.
In September 2021, Rahimi hired a car to reach the Chaman-Spin Boldak border with her younger brother and four nephews, aged 8-14. Wearing a light blue chadori (the head-to-toe burqa), she entered Quetta in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province without a visa.
“Each passenger cost 6,310 afghani (US$71). However, the driver charged half-payment for children,” said 24-year-old Rahimi, who used to report for Kabul-based Farhang Press. Luckily for them, the border security wasn’t tight in the early days of the Taliban takeover. And waiting for legal documentation could have meant risking arrest and possible execution “My elderly parents couldn’t join us,” says Rahimi, who now shares one of the four rooms in a rented house with other Afghan families in Quetta. She deleted Taliban call logs to avoid scrutiny by Pakistani border and security personnel and now uses a local SIM card.But as an unregistered refugee, Rahimi doesn’t have any income. Her brother, a tailor, supports the family.
“I accepted Christ as I read in the Bible John 3:16. On one side our own people were trying to kill us while a pastor was helping us with rations and money. I found Christ as my savior” In November, she was baptized by Pastor Irfan James in a small church in Quetta.”I accepted Christ as I read in the Bible John 3:16. On one side our own people were trying to kill us while a pastor was helping us with rations and money. I found Christ as my savior,” she told UCA News.She is among the 100 believers who have received a copy of the Bible from Pastor James, who is running an underground ministry from Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. He has to grow a beard and leave church documents behind before crossing the border using local contacts. They also help him in relocating underground Christians.
“Changing physical gestures is crucial for survival,” Pastor James told UCA News via WhatsApp. “Many have changed their phone numbers to avoid persecution. The Afghani converts along with defense personnel and spokespersons of the former government are on the Taliban’s hit list.”
Some 450 Afghan families, living in an Islamabad park, have been holding protests for months demanding legal status, with many seeking onward passage to European nations.
The protesting families, including children, carry mock coffins and wear white shirts emblazoned with messages in red paint saying “Kill us or rescue us.”
Instead of initiating a police crackdown on the protesting Afghans, the government of Pakistan should shelter the refugees on a humanitarian basis, said Pastor James.”Women have vanished and families are forced to sell their children due to crippling hunger and economic crisis. Church groups should invest in small business enterprises and medical camps for the converted Afghans,” he added.
“The Taliban have access and followers in Quetta. My nephews depend on me. Everything is so expensive but I do not want to return. We need help”Since the Taliban takeover, the persecution watchdog Christian Solidarity International and two local churches have been helping 400 Afghan refugees in Quetta and Chaman, another border town of Pakistan.
They are among 250,000 Afghans who have crossed into Pakistan after the Taliban seized full control of the country next door.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has estimated that 1.3 million Afghan refugees are registered in Pakistan. In Afghanistan, the estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Christians are all converts from Islam and forced to worship secretly in homes or other small venues.
Half of Americans Rule Out Pentecostal Churches
Most Americans are open to a variety of denominations of Christian churches, including many people of other faiths or no faith at all.
Americans have a wide range of opinions and impressions about Christian denominations, but most won’t rule out a church based on its denomination, according to a new study from Lifeway Research. From a list of nine denominational terms — Assemblies of God, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, and nondenominational —more Americans rule out Pentecostal than any other denomination. Just over half of Americans (51%) say a church with Pentecostal in the name is not for them. But for each of the other denominations in the study, most Americans say a specific religious label in the name of a church is not an automatic deterrent for them. Americans are most open to nondenominational and Baptist churches.
French Bishop Strips Seminarians of CassocK
The bishop of Toulouse has banned seminarians and deacons in his diocese from wearing cassocks because he does not want men in formation to “appear too clerical.” Bishop Guy de Kerimel wrote a letter to seminarians on Thursday noting that he had seen some of them wearing cassocks and surplices at a recent confirmation service in the diocesan basilica of Notre-Dame de la Daurade.
The bishop said he found that “the image presented to the basilica of these future clerics installed in stalls, away from the faithful (without being in service), gave a very clerical image not adjusted to the situation of seminarians who remain lay faithful.”
Bishop Kerimel lashed out at the seminarians for disregarding his previous instructions regarding the wearing of clerical garb and ordered that “the wearing of the cassock is not permitted in the seminary; it is the law in force.” “I, therefore, ask that this law be applied outside the seminary in the diocese of Toulouse, including for deacons,” he added.
Seminarians should prioritize their “relationship with Christ, in humility and truth, without trying to enter into a role so that He is accessible to all, particularly the poorest and most marginalized, before worrying about displaying a distinctive persona,” Kerimel stressed.
“The future priest must be identified and recognized by his holiness, his spirit of service and the quality of his pastoral relationship, above all,” the bishop wrote, pointing out that deacons may wear a Roman collar or single cross while priests may wear a habit.
“At one time, some thought that it was an obstacle to their apostolate. Today, many young priests believe the cassock is their best ally in a de-Christianized society,” reasons Fr. Marc-Olivier de Vaugiraud from Mantes-la-Jolie.
For Conservative Christians, the End of Roe Was a Spiritual Victory
For nearly 50 years, conservative Christians marched, strategized and prayed. And then, on an ordinary Friday morning in June, the day they had dreamed of finally came.
Ending the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade took a decades-long campaign, the culmination of potlucks in church gymnasiums and prayers in the Oval Office. It was the moment they long imagined, an outcome many refused to believe was impossible, the sign of a new America.
For many conservative believers and anti-abortion groups grounded in Catholic or evangelical principles, the Supreme Court’s decision was not just a political victory but a spiritual one.
“It is more than celebration,” said Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “It is a moment of gratitude to the Lord, and gratitude to so many people, in the church and beyond the church, who have worked and prayed so hard for this day to come.”
Even the timing of the decision had a spiritual overtone, coming on the day Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, honouring the love of Jesus for the world. It gave people “the opportunity to expand our hearts in love” for people at all stages of life, from before birth through death, Archbishop Lori said.