Australian bishops adopt new Safeguarding Standards

New Delhi, India, Jun 5, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Hindu nationalists trampled a photo of Pope Francis near Sacred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi in a video calling for a Christian-free India which was recently posted online.

The video shows a group of about 20 people chanting “Pope Francis murdabad,” meaning “down with Pope Francis,” after a speech by a man believed to be the controversial Hindu leader Om Swami Maharaj.

Muharaj accused Christians of promoting terrorism and threatened forcefully to expel them from India, reported UCA News.

The video began circulating on social media a few weeks after Archbishop Anil Couto of Delhi wrote a letter calling for a one year prayer campaign leading up to India’s 2019 general elections.

“We are witnessing a turbulent political atmosphere which poses a threat to the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution and the secular fabric of our nation,” begins the letter, which was read aloud in the archdiocese’s May 13 Masses.

Archbishop Couto requested that Catholics in India’s capital city fast from one meal every Friday for the next year, offering the sacrifice for the spiritual renewal of the nation. He also asked each parish to host a Eucharistic Adoration holy hour each Friday, in which India is consecrated to Our Lady of Fatima.

The archbishop’s letter quickly sparked a controversy among the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Several BJP leaders condemned the archbishop’s letter, calling it a “divisive move.” One BJP parliamentarian, Subramanian Swamy, called for India to end all diplomatic relations with the Vatican in a Twitter message May 23.

Archbishop Couto responded in an interview with Asian News International that “In all churches and institutions we pray and fast. I’m not meddling in partisan politics. We’re just praying that nation should walk in right direction.”

There has been an increase in attacks against Christians in India since the BJP came to power in 2014.

Attacks against Christians in India by Hindu extremists more than doubled from 2016 to 2017, according to a report by Persecution Relief which documented 736 such incidents in the past year.

Religious freedom in India varies among its 29 states. The U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom found that conditions worsened in ten states in India in 2017: Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Odisha, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan.

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Kochi, India, Sep 21, 2018 / 11:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jullundur was arrested by Kerala police Friday over allegations that he raped a nun repeatedly over the course of two years. The bishop denies the accusations.

The Sept. 21 arrest was made in Kochi after three days of interrogation. The bishop will be brought to court Saturday, the BBC reports.

Mulakkal, 54, wrote to the Vatican last week asking to be relieved of administration of his diocese; his request was granted, and Bishop Agnelo Gracias, an Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus of Bombay, was appointed apostolic administrator of Jullundur Sept. 20.

A nun, who is a member of the Missionaries of Jesus, has said that Bishop Mulakkal raped her during his May 2014 visit to her convent in Kuravilangad, in Kerala. In a 72-page complaint to police, filed June 29, she alleged that the bishop sexually abused her more than a dozen times over two years.

During his questioning by police, Bishop Mulakkal made several inconsistent statements, India Today reported.

According to India Today, the bishop claimed he did not stay at the Kuravilangad convent May 5, 2014, when the nun alleges she was first raped by him, but that he visited the convent, while he stayed the night at a convent in Muthalakodam.

“When police cross-checked this information with his driver and another nun who made entries of his visit in the register, they found that the bishop and his driver actually stayed in the Kuravilangad convent on the said day,” the Uttar Pradesh-based outlet reported.

A nun in the Muthalakodam convent denied he visited them, and data from the bishop’s mobile phone indicated he was present at the Kuravilangad convent that night.

A group of seven nuns, most of them Missionaries of Jesus, began protesting state and Church inaction over the matter Sept. 8 in Kochi.

Bishop Mulakkal has claimed the allegations were made in retaliation against him because he has acted against the nun’s sexual misconduct, the bishop told UCA News. He said the nun was alleged to be having an affair with her cousin’s husband.

Three more women have accused the bishop in recent days of sexual misconduct against them, but the Missionaries of Jesus’ superior general maintains that the bishop is innocent. The congregation is based in the Jullundur diocese, and Bishop Mulakkal is its patron.

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Chinese pilgrims attend the general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Oct. 12, 2016. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA.

Denver Newsroom, Jul 9, 2021 / 15:15 pm (CNA).

Today, July 9, the Church celebrates the feast day of Chinese Martyrs, 120 faithful Catholics assassinated for their faith between 1648 and 1930.  86 of them died in 1900, during the so-called “Boxer Rebellion,” a Chinese anti-Western revolt that caused the killing of Catholic, Evangelical and Anglican missionaries as well as other Europeans and Americans. 

Of the group canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 1st of 2000, 87 were Chinese laypeople and 33 were missionaries.

The feast is an occasion for the Chinese Catholic diaspora, and for the Universal Catholic church as a whole, to pray for Christians currently persecuted in Communist China, especially those Catholics who despite being a minority in Hong Kong, constitute the backbone of the freedom movement and are currently being jailed such as Catholic convert Jimmy Lai, owner of the pro-democracy paper Apple News; or those forced to exile, like pro-democracy Catholic leader Joseph Cheng.

“Chinese men and women of every age and state, priests, religious and lay people, showed the same conviction and joy, sealing their unfailing fidelity to Christ and the Church with the gift of their lives,” said St. John Paul II during the canonization.

“Resplendent in this host of martyrs are also the 33 missionaries who left their land and sought to immerse themselves in the Chinese world, lovingly assimilating its features in the desire to proclaim Christ and to serve those people.”

Of the 33 foreign-born missionaries, most were priests and religious, including members of the Order of Preachers, Friars Minor, Jesuits, Salesians and Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.

One of the more well-known native martyrs was a 14-year-old Chinese girl named Ann Wang, who was killed during the Boxer Rebellion when she refused to apostatize. She bravely withstood the threats of her torturers, and just as she was about to be beheaded, she radiantly declared, “The door of heaven is open to all ” and repeated the name of Jesus three times.

Another of the martyrs was 18-year-old Chi Zhuzi, who had been preparing to receive the sacrament of Baptism when he was caught on the road one night and ordered to worship idols. He refused to do so, revealing his belief in Christ. His right arm was cut off and he was tortured, but he would not deny his faith. Rather, he fearlessly pronounced to his captors, before being flayed alive, “Every piece of my flesh, every drop of my blood will tell you that I am Christian.”

Augustine Zhao Rong was the first native Chinese priest to become a martyr. Born in 1746, he served as one of the soldiers who escorted Bishop John Gabriel Taurin Dufresse to his martyrdom in Beijing. The witness of the bishop led Augustine to seek baptism at age 30. He was ordained a priest five years later and was martyred in 1815.

During the canonisation Mass, Pope John Paul II thanked God for blessing the Church with the heroic witness of the 120 martyrs, whom he called “an example of courage and consistency to us all.”

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