NEW DELHI, India (Morning Star News) – Hindu extremists in northern India launched an attack on a house church service on Dec. 25 that seriously injured a pastor’s son, one of at least 10 cases of aggression in Haryana state that stopped Christmas celebrations for hundreds of Christians. Pastor J.J. Singh, a Christian leader in Haryana state, said a team formed to help distressed Christians was exhausted by calls from churches attacked on Christmas Day, as they received reports from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. “Our Christmas was completely spoiled,” Pastor Singh told Morning Star News. “Our team left the Christmas program taking place in the church and sat around a table dealing with one case after another. The calls were still coming, but we were extremely exhausted and decided to shut down our phones.” In the attack on the Christmas service of the house church in Siwanka village, Sonipat District, Hindu extremists brandishing wooden batons and stones assaulted 73-year-old pastor Ram Kishan and seriously wounded his son, Vinod Kishan, the pastor said. “Five or six men pounced on me, and an equal number on Vinod, and began to hit us,” Pastor Kishan said. “They hit Vinod so badly that he began to bleed

The Mother Teresa nuns are hoping for some support from state governments in India after losing foreign donations Since Christmas, the Missionaries of Charity have been strictly rationing the food and daily use items for their regular 600 beneficiaries at their motherhouse and Shishu Bhavan, a children's orphanage, in Kolkata. On Jan. 2, the breakfast of tea, bread and eggs was cut short by an hour. "As long as you did it to one of these, my least brethren, you did it to me," said Razia, a beneficiary of the Missionaries of Charity, as she waited for the nuns to give her the weekly provisions. She lives with her two sick children across the road from the motherhouse and says she visits the tomb of St. Teresa and prays for the "difficult times to pass." Abdul Razzak, a 45-year-old beggar, stays put outside the motherhouse curled in his rags. He has been staying there since Christmas in hopes of getting his share of food and medicine. A few others like him sit along with him to receive their subsidy from the nuns. Since the pandemic began, they received their daily meal from the motherhouse, but now "sisters told us that we might not

The government of Orissa is offering economic aid to the Missionaries of Charity, who tell us from Bhubaneswar: "We are not worried, the Father will take care of our needs. New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) - The Indian governments stop to foreign funding is not limited to the Missionaries of Charity: as of January 1, almost 6,000 Indian NGOs can no longer access funds from foreign countries. The news - offering a broader picture of the problem that has come to the fore precisely at the time of Christmas in India - was broken by The Hindu newspaper which cites official documents of the Ministry of Interior in New Delhi. To be precise, 5933 organizations have lost the status required by the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, the legislation that regulates the possibility for Indian organizations to receive funding from abroad. One figure is enough to give an idea of the impact of what is happening: until December 31, 2021, there were 22,762 active licenses, today there are 16,829. In just a few days, therefore, they have been quartered. Together with the Missionaries of Charity, there are other high profile victims of this obstacle: Oxfam India, the local branch of one of the best-known international NGOs, released

Read the article in Scroll.in Scroll.in tracked three incidents in Bihar, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh that did not even make it to the news. On Christmas eve in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district, eight Christians set out on their bikes to do their yearly round of carol singing. As the bikes passed through Parnaali, a forested area in Meghnagar tehsil, they were waylaid by a group of alleged Bajrang Dal members. The carol singers were struck with sticks and axes. “Out of nowhere, these men started pelting stones at us,” said Pastor Naikhya Garhwal, who was one of the carol singers. “Two people fell off their bikes,” he continued. “We were hit on our arms and backs with stones. When we fell off our bikes, more [attackers] came out and hit us with an axe. One of us, Ramesh, was hit directly on his head and his scalp was torn apart. My son, Sem, was hit so hard there was a big bump on his head. He developed serious internal injuries.” Nearly a week after the incident, both were still in hospital. The Jhabua incident is among the rash of attacks that broke out across the country around Christmas this year. Hindutva mobs disrupted celebrations in schools and

Read the story in National Herald The MHA order would mean that after midnight of 31st Dec, the organisation would have no funds to operate its large number of children and old people’s homes which employ thousands of Indian workers I wouldn’t know for sure if the signature of Mother Teresa of Calcutta was on the application of the Missionaries of Charity when they applied for permission under the Foreign Contributions Regulations Act, FCRA, to receive donations from people all over the world for their work with foundling babies and the dying destitute in almost every state of India. But there is little doubt that Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s personal nod would have been necessary for the cancellation of the FCRA permission. Specially as it is the Christmas season when the eyes of the world are, unfortunately, so firmly fixed on India. The small Christian community here is reeling under a fusillade of Sangh extremist violence against churches, statues of Christ, and as always, against children, women and men deep in worship, and perhaps singing lullabies to the new-born Yesu. For the record, at least 300 cases of such violence were recorded primarily from Karnataka, which is enacting an anti-conversion law targeting Muslims and

12/27/2021: The Indian government on Monday "refused" to renew a permission that is vital for Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity (MoC) to be able to secure foreign funds, cutting off a key source the charity has depended on to run its programs for the impoverished. Nobel-laureate Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic nun who died in 1997, founded the MoC in 1950. The charity has more than 3,000 nuns worldwide who run hospices, community kitchens, schools, leper colonies and homes for abandoned children. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi refused permission to the charity under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) on Saturday after it received some "adverse inputs", a government statement said. "While considering the MoC's renewal application, some adverse inputs were noticed," the home ministry said, without providing details. The ministry also rejected an earlier allegation of the West Bengal state chief minister Mamata Banerjee that the bank accounts of the charity were frozen. Later, the MoC in a statement confirmed their FCRA application was not renewed and that it has asked its centres not to operate any foreign contributions accounts until the matter is resolved. The move comes as hardline Hindu outfits affiliated to Modi's party have accused the MoC of leading religious

It is an attack on the poorest of the poor, said the Catholic church. Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity said on Monday that it had asked its centres across India not to operate the organisation’s foreign contribution accounts after the Ministry of Home Affairs refused to renew its permission to receive funds from abroad. The Catholic organisation runs more than 240 homes for orphans, the destitute and AIDS patients across India. The ministry said in a press release that the organisation’s application was refused on Christmas Day for failing to meet the eligibility conditions under Foreign Contribution Regulation Act 2010 and Foreign Contribution Regulation Rules 2011. “