A Catholic priest died March 26 after falling from the terrace of a major seminary near Chennai where he was teaching for the past several years. According to a message from Monsignor L John Robert, administrator of Vellore diocese, Father Velanganni Vinothraj died because of a fall from the terrace of Sacred Heart Seminary at Poonamallee. He was 46.
India’s Christian-dominated states feel the dead hand of corruption
Life in India’s Christian-majority northeastern states is often full of individual idio-syncrasies — and the focus keeps shifting between the pro-tagonists, particularly when politics seeks shelter under the shadow of church communities. Former Nagaland chief minister Vamuzo (he uses only one name) has said the Church in his Christian-majority state “is often like the air we breathe. It is everywhere but mostly nowhere.”
Such statements come into focus for Mizoram, another Christian-majority state, where a prominent Congress party leader recently apologized for opening alcohol outlets when his party ran the government between 2008 and 2018.
“We opened shops and issued alcohol permits against the interests of churches and NGOs, which was the main reason for our defeat” in the state polls in 2018, Congress leader Lal Thanzara has said. It shows the political clout the Christian community wields in Mizoram, where they form 87% of the state’s 1.1 million people. The majority of them are Presbyterians and Baptists.
Nun accused of conversion granted anticipatory bail
The Madhya Pradesh High Court on March 16 granted anticipatory bail to a Catholic nun accused of violating the central Indian state’s anti-conversion law.
Sister Bhagya, a member of the Sisters of the Destitute, was asked to furnish personal bond of 10,000 rupees and with one solvent surety of the same amount to avail the interim bail. The single judge bench has posted the case to April 7 for the next hearing.
The nun, who is the principal of the Sacred Heart Convent High School in Khajuraho of Chhatarpur district, has been booked under sections 3 and 5 of the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Ordinance, 2020.
The allegation against her is that she attempted to convert a former staff member who functioned as an Assistant Librarian in the said school and whose services were terminated subsequently on account of poor performance.
Church rushes help as fire kills two in Arunachal Pradesh
The Catholic diocese of Miao has rushed its social service team to a village where a massive fire accident killed two persons and rendered 500 homeless. “This was the biggest fire accident I have witnessed in my life,” Sethok Thinyan, a youth leader and member of the Church team that visited the affected village, told Matters India. According to him, all houses in Longliang village in Tirap district are made of bamboos with thatched roofs and built adjacent to one another. “A small spark aided by the usual strong wind could spell a doom for the whole village. The fire tenders too could not arrive due to the remoteness of the village,” the youth leader explained. The fire on March 18 also destroyed the food grains saved for the rest of the year, he added.
Vote for those upholding Constitution: Assam Christian Forum
The Assam Christian Forum, representing all denominations in the north-eastern Indian state, has appealed to the people to vote for candidates who work for an inclusive and secular society and uphold the Constitution. In the first such pre-election appeal, the forum also warned against the victimization of people if the Citizenship (Amendment) Act is promulgated. The Act seeks to fast-track the citizenship of non-Muslims who reportedly fled religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakis-tan and took refuge in India till December 31, 2014.
Pope Francis says he’ll die in Rome, not in Argentina
In a candid 2019 interview published Saturday, Pope Francis reveals that he sees himself “dying as pope,” either in active duty or in retirement, and in Rome, because, he said, “I am not going back to Argentina.”
In the interview, published by Argentina’s paper of record, La Nacion, Pope Francis acknowledges that he does think about death, but says he is not afraid of it “at all.”
In context, the pope’s reference to not going back to Argentina appears to mean he won’t return for the end of his life, as many had speculated. However, given his reluctance to make a homecoming trip since his election in 2013, it could be that Francis meant he’s never going back at all.
The fact that Francis didn’t stop in Argentina in 2013, on his way to or from Brazil for World Youth Day, has led to speculation ever since about why the pontiff doesn’t want to go home, and, according to some opinion polls, a loss of support among his fellow Argentines who see the pope’s reluctance as a political choice.
For the past eight years, Francis has crisscrossed Latin America. Beyond the Guianas, the only nations in South America the first pope from the Global South hasn’t yet visited are Uruguay, Venezuela, and, of course, his own country, the land of Evita, Maradona and Che.
Bible reading boosts mental well-being among Christians, UK survey says
Reading the Bible has had a positive effect on people’s “mental well-being” during the pandemic, according to a Christian Research survey conducted in the United Kingdom. The survey also found that respondents were reading the Bible more and turning to Bible-related videos more during the pandemic.
The survey, carried out on behalf of the Bible Society, posed a number of questions to 1,000 people in the United Kingdom who identified themselves as Christians and who had attended church at least once a month before restrictions aimed at curbing the pandemic. The questions were asked in December, and the results were published online by the Bible Society March 1.
42% of respondents reported that reading the Bible increased a “sense of hope in God during the crisis, rising to nearly half (49%) among 45- to 54-year-olds,” the report by the Bible Society said. “Some 28% said that reading the Bible had increased their confidence in the future,” while 63% said they felt their level of confidence remained the same, rather than dropping, it said.
It said 23% of those surveyed said the Bible “had increased their mental well-being, including 47% of 24- to 34-year-olds,” and 33% of 16- to 24-year-olds reported that reading the Bible had helped them “feel less lonely.” The report said 35% of survey respondents were reading the Bible more during the pandemic with the biggest increase among 25- to 34-year-olds in which “53% were reading the Bible more often.”
“A quarter of those asked, said that they were reading the Bible ‘multiple times a day’ and half said that they were reading the Bible on a daily basis,” the Bible Society said.
It also found that 25% of the 25- to 34-year-olds in the survey said they had begun reading the Bible during the pandemic.
While many continue to turn to print editions of the Bible, 23% reported using “a Bible-reading app, 30% are now listening to the Bible” and 59% of those surveyed said that “they now watched more Bible-related videos or had started watching them.”
Vatican official concerned by populist leaders ‘hijacking’ religion
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, head of the Vatican’s evangelization congregation, has expressed concern over the “hijacking” of religion by populist leaders who sow division and exploit the anger of those who feel excluded.
Speaking after he delivered the 2021 Trócaire/St Patrick’s College Maynooth annual Lenten lecture March 9 on “Caring for the Human Family and our Common Home,” the Filipino prelate warned, “There is a grow-ing sense in the world today of divisiveness, and unfortunately religion is being used to further division; sometimes even within the same religious affiliation you have divisions.” Referring to the recent rise of populist leaders, Tagle described the phenomenon as “the return of the powerful big-boss-type of people,” some of whom “hijack religion.”
These so-called populist leaders know where the pockets of disgruntled people are, and they present themselves as messiahs, he said. They use religion as a “convenient way” of getting followers, he added.
The president of Caritas Internationalis noted that in the encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis devoted several paragraphs to the matter of populist leaders who claim that they are defending the people, when in fact they are defending a certain group.
More Nigerian Schoolgirls Kidnapped while a Christian Pastor Pleads for His Life
In the early morning hours of Friday, February 26, CNN reported that hundreds of female students had been kidnapped overnight from their boarding school in Nigeria. “They came on about 20 motorcycles and they marched the abducted girls into the forest,” a source told CNN. “The bandits arrived around 1:45 a.m. and they operated ‘til about 3 a.m.”
This outrageous assault took place less than a week following the 3-year anniversary of the abduction of well-known Nigerian kidnapping victim, Leah Sharibu. In a similar invasion, on February 19, 2018, Leah’s school had been attacked, and she and her classmates were abducted by Boko Haram terrorists.
Boko Haram’s kidnapping of Leah Sharibu and her classmates horrifically demonstrated Boko Haram’s radical Islamist agenda. Her classmates, who were released, were Muslim girls. She, alo-ne, refused to deny her Christian faith and has remained enslaved for three years. Leah has reportedly given birth to the child of one of her captors.
Meanwhile, in a related and tragic story of religiously-based kidnapping, on February 25, Christian Pastor Bulus Yakuru, who was seized during a Christmas Eve attack, stated he will be executed within a week if President Muhammadu Buhari does not meet Boko Haram’s demands for his release. In a new video, Pastor Yakuru identified himself and pleaded with Nige-ria’s president, the Borno State governor, and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the umbrella body of Christians in the country, to intervene and secure his release.
French Court Vindicates Christian History in School
A French public school teacher has been cleared of sanctions for teaching about Christianity.
Matthieu Faucher, an atheist, faced a years-long legal battle after being accused of violating France’s official ”neutrality and secularism” standard by teaching about Christian history.
After school authorities received an anonymous complaint of proselytism, Faucher was suspended — despite parents’ protests. His superiors validated the sanction, and in June 2017, he was assigned to a different school.
Faucher denied failing “in his duty to neutrality and secularism,” and he won a suit against school authorities in a local court. The Ministry of National Edu-cation challenged the court’s decision, which was subsequently validated by an administrative court in Bordeaux on Dec. 22.
While he was happy about the Bordeaux court’s decision, Faucher said that “much bigger things are at play,” including the teaching of the history of religion by secular teachers.