A year of martyrs and persecution for Indian Catholics

The Vatican canonized Blessed Devashayam while the Catholic community seeks justice for Father Stan Swamy

Indian Catholics celebrated the canonization of their first layman saint in 2022 amid a spike in violence against Christians across the nation and growing strife over a liturgy dispute within an Oriental Church.

Pope Francis canonized Blessed Lazarus, popularly known as Devasahayam, at the Vatican on May 15.

“In Devasahayam we have the first Indian who is acknowledged to have won the crown of martyrdom on Indian soil,” observed Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrao, the archbishop of Goa and Daman and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI).

Devasahayam is also the first married person from India to be conferred a sainthood, he added underlining the special significance of his canonization for the Church in India.

The Vatican scored another first in India when it appointed Archbishop Anthony Poola of Hyderabad as the country’s first cardinal from a Dalit or formerly untouchable community.

About 201 million of India’s 1.3 billion-plus people are Dalits, many having converted to Christianity and Islam over the centuries to escape caste-based discrimination. Some 60 percent of India’s 25 million Christians are believed to be of Dalit or tribal origin.

“Dalit Catholics have been demanding important positions in the Church hierarchy”
The appointment of Cardinal Poola to the coveted office is being seen as the Catholic Church’s recognition of the Dalits’ struggle to be recognized as equals.

Dalit Catholics have been demanding important positions in the Church hierarchy including as bishops and archbishops and heads of official bodies of the Church where their presence remains thin.

Dalit Christians also made headlines as the nation’s Supreme Court began hearing a 22-year-old petition demanding their recognition as a Scheduled Caste (SC), the official name for former untouchable communities in the country.

The fulfillment of this demand will ensure Dalit Christians, along with Muslims, a share in the 15 percent reserved quota in parliament and state legislatures, government jobs, and education, at present extended only to Dalits belonging to Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist religions.

The federal government instead announced the setting up of a three-member inquiry commission headed by a former chief justice of the Supreme Court to look into the possibility and impact of granting the demand for SC status and submit a report within two years.

Dalit Christian leaders dismissed this as a delaying tactic by the federal government helmed by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is known for its animosity toward the minority Christian community.

A major indicator of this was the manner in which it allegedly framed Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest and indigenous rights activist who died in custody on July 5, 2021.

Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensics firm, in a recent report, disclosed how the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the country’s anti-terror agency, may have framed the elderly Jesuit priest on the basis of false evidence planted in his computer by hacking it.

“At least 300 Christian families were driven from their villages”
Father Swamy was charged with having links with outlawed Maoist rebels and conspiring to topple the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was arrested on Oct. 8, 2020, and charged under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on the basis of digital evidence collected from his computer’s hard drive.

The US-based digital forensic firm’s report said that “over 50 files were created on Father Stan’s hard drive, including incriminating documents that fabricated links between him and the Maoist insurgency.”

The priest’s tragic death after being repeatedly denied bail despite age-related ailments caused a public outcry against the highhandedness of the government.

Violence against Christians continued through the year with Dec. 18 marking a new low with some 20 incidents of public beatings of indigenous Christians reported from the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

At least 300 Christian families were driven from their villages, and their houses and other belongings were either destroyed or looted by angry villagers opposed to their faith.

The United Christian Forum (UCF) an ecumenical body in a report released on Nov. 26 said a total of 511 incidents were reported so far this year as against 505 in 2021.

Data shows the states of Uttar Pradesh in the north, followed by Chhattisgarh in central India, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the south were the worst places to be for the nation’s Christians.

In almost all incidents, vigilante mobs comprising extremist elements were involved. Their modus operandi appeared to be to make religious conversion activity allegations and either barge into prayer gatherings or attack individuals or small groups of Christians.

“Church leaders say state laws are aimed at persecuting minority Christians and Muslims”
Several BJP-ruled states have enacted anti-conversion laws for the publicly stated purpose of checking religious conversion through fraudulent means.

However, Church leaders say state laws are aimed at persecuting minority Christians and Muslims.

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is hearing a public interest petition filed by a BJP leader, Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay, seeking to enact a national law to check religious conversions calling them “a threat to India’s unity, integrity and security.”

Church leaders have urged the nation’s top court to allow them to implead themselves in the case and contest Upadhyay’s false claims, which were described as “scurrilous, vexatious and scandalous.”

All this while, a decades-old liturgy dispute continued to rage in the Eastern-rite Syro-Malabar Church based in the southern state of Kerala with its clergy and faithful divided over celebrating Mass.

The bishop’s synod wants the celebrant to alternately face the people and the altar but more than 90 percent of the laity and 460 of the 470 priests want to continue with the traditional Mass where the priest faces the congregation throughout.

The dispute led to the priests and the laypeople launching the centenary celebrations of their archdiocese on Dec. 21 without Cardinal George Alencherry, the head of the Oriental Church, who was not invited.

Further south in Kerala, the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Trivandrum made history, of sorts, by leading a 140-day-long protest by local fishermen against an under-construction international seaport, which endangered the life and livelihood of the fisher folk.

The protest, however, was called off temporarily after it turned violent in which more than 125 people including 36 police were injured.

The protesters alleged the port construction was causing massive coastal erosion along the Vizhinjam coast and about 500 fishermen have lost their homes and await rehabilitation.

Surprisingly, the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI), which is the national body of Catholic bishops of all three rites — the Eastern rite Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Churches, and the Latin rite Church — in the country has been a silent spectator to the persecution and other rights violations of vulnerable members of the community.

This article is published from https://www.ucanews.com/