Jesuit Father Felix Raj, vice chancellor of St Xavier’s University, Kolkata, was honoured with Xavier Ratna Award by the Xavier Institute of Engineering, Mumbai on January 11 at its 11th Convocation. Father Raj was the Chief-Guest for the Convocation and delivered the Convocation Address. Jesuit Father John Rose, the Director of the Institute gave away the award on behalf of the institute and the Jesuit Province of Mumbai.
Salesian varsity receives ‘Engaged University of the Year 2020 Award”
Assam Don Bosco University won the “Engaged University of the Year 2020 Asia Pacific (Entrepreneurship and Engagement Excellence) Award” on January 10. This prestigious international award was conferred by the Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial & Engaged Universities (ACEEU), Netherlands.
Founder of Kerala’s Vincentian congregation on sainthood path
Father Varkey Kattarath, the founder of Vincentian Congregation, will be declared a Servant of God soon, marking the commencement of the cause for his canonization. The priest was born on October 31, 1851, and died on October 24, 1931. His mortal remains were interred at St Gregorious Church, Thottakam.
Indian Church to use new English lectionary from April
The Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) will release the new English lectionary for the Church in India on February 16 and it will come into effect from Palm Sunday, on April 5.
The conference claims the new lectionary’s publication is a landmark in the Indian Church history and that it is a contribution of the Church in India to the Universal Church.
“It shows our biblical scholarship and liturgical competence,” says a CCBI press note from its deputy secretary general Father Stephen Alathara.
The CCBI, the national body of the Latin rite bishops in the country, had in 2015 directed its Bible and Liturgy Commissions to prepare the lectionary and they took “almost five years to complete this significant and important project.”
The lectionary presents has been prepared by experienced and prominent biblical scholars ensuring compatibility with Catholic teaching and textual accuracy from the original texts of the scriptures.
Pope shows up unannounced at funeral of lay woman and friend
Despite the ethereal air that has often surrounded popes over the centuries, Francis is famous for projecting ordinary humanity. Usually that everyman ethos expresses itself in warmth and approachability, though every now and then we also get a glimpse of grumpiness, as happened on New Year’s Eve when Francis slapped away an overly clingy woman in St. Peter’s Square. More rarely still, we also see this pope showing another classic human emotion – grief. Ironically enough, the most recent case in point also came on New Year’s Eve, although it didn’t generate anything like the media echo of the slapping incident. On Dec. 31, Pope Francis attended the funeral Mass of a friend, Italian laywoman Maria Grazia Mara, nicknamed “Nella,” who died at the age of 95 the day before.
Catholic leaders join New Yorkers in march against hate
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn joined about 25,000 New Yorkers who took to the streets for a Jan. 5 “Solidarity March” in protest of anti-Semitism.
“When there’s an attack on you, there’s an attack on all of us,” Cardinal Dolan said in remarks at the rally in Brooklyn after participants had crossed the Brooklyn Bridge.
The march, which made its way from Lower Manhattan to Cadman Plaza in Downtown Brooklyn, brought together Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike from the New York area, along with a host of local leaders.
President of Asia’s bishops’ confederation calls for end of police brutality in Hong Kong
Asia’s leading cardinal was among the dozens of people to sign an open letter to the Hong Kong government to complain about “police brutality” over the Christmas period in the self-governing Chinese city. Major protests began in the former British colony in June, after the Hong Kong government attempted to push through legislation which would have allowed residents to be extradited to mainland China. Marches and demonstrations have continued regularly since then, with some drawing more than a million participants.
Row over Syro-Malabar Mass resurfaces
The question whether the celebrant should face the congregation (westward) or eastward during Mass, a bone of contention in the Syro-Malabar Church for several decades, is back in focus again. On the agenda of the Church Synod meeting at St Thomas Mount in Kochi, headquarters of the Church, from January 7 are possible changes to the liturgy and the direction the celebrant should take during Mass. Monsignor Varghese Njaliath, senior priest and an expert on liturgy, on January 2 made an appeal to the Synod not to ban the practice of priests celebrating Mass facing the congregation.
BJP president meets Christian pastors on CAA
Bharatiya Janata Party president Jagat Prakash Nadda has tried to get the support of Christian community to the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
The former student of St Xavier’s School in Patna on January 7 met with around 15 pastors of various Christian denominations in the national capital.
BJP vice president Dushyant Gautam and Tom Vadakkan, a Christian from Kerala who joined the pro-Hindu party in 2018, were present at the meeting in Nadda’s Motilal Nehru Marg residence.
The Christian delegates reportedly expressed their displeasure with the Act.
Nadda spoke about his time at the St Xavier’s and reminisced about his time with the Jesuit priests who manage the school. Then, he said the CAA was only to ensure that citizenship is granted to persecuted people from across the border.
He also said he wanted to clarify and change the misinformation spreading on the Act and that he wanted to ensure the Christian priests understood it. BJP had also considered Christian persecution in these countries and that is why the community was also included, Nadda added.
Bishop, former chaplain to queen, to be received into Catholic Church
A former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II is to be received into the Catholic Church.
Bishop Gavin Ashenden of the Christian Episcopal Church will become a Catholic Dec. 22 in Shrewsbury cathedral. He said he had reached the conclusion that only the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches “have the capacity to defend the faith” from the influence of secularism.
A Dec. 17 statement from the Diocese of Shrewsbury said Ashenden’s Anglican orders will be suspended and he will become a lay Catholic theologian.
In a Dec. 17 statement sent by email to Catholic News Service, the bishop said, “The claims and expression of the Catholic faith are the most profound and potent expression of apostolic and patristic belief” and that he now accepted the primacy of the pope.
Ashenden said he was grateful to Catholic Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury and the Catholics of his diocese for the opportunity to “be reconciled to the church that gave birth to my earlier (Anglican) tradition.”
“I am especially grateful for the example and the prayers of St. John Henry Newman,” he said.
“He did his best to remain a faithful Anglican and renew his mother church with the vigor and integrity of the Catholic tradition,” he said. “Now, as then, however, his experience informs ours that the Church of England is inclined to be rooted in secularized culture rather than the integrity and insight of biblical, apostolic and patristic values.”
In a Dec. 17 statement, Davies said it was “very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full communion in the year of canonization of St. John Henry Newman.”