Nirmala Carvalho

A crowd of 30 people stormed the small hospital run by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Mokama, terrorising patients. The violence was triggered by the failure to revive a 40-year-old man taken to the facility after he was shot and wounded.

The Indian congregation founded in 1921 by Fr Raymond Mascarenhas together with four young teachers marks its first a century. Today it is present in nine countries on three continents. In India it remains an important point of reference for the empowerment of women, especially in slums and villages.

Buildings collapsed from flood waters. Chembur and Vikhroli suffer the heaviest toll. Local parishes have opened their doors to those who lost everything. “I pray for the victims and the survivors,” said Card Gracias.

The bishop has appealed to Prime Minister Modi to rebuild the place of worship razed to the ground on July 12. Responsibility is being shifted between public bodies as to who ordered the demolition of the "illegal" building. The local priest said, "There was no warning. In the same area of public property there are also a temple, a mosque and another church that have not been touched.

A circular from the superintendent of police in Sukma district instructs all local stations to closely monitor missionary activities. The document “smacks of bias and arbitrariness,” said a former spokesman for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India. “A police officer is required by the constitution to protect the freedom of individual citizens and guarantee their safety.”

According to local authorities, the church construction was illegal; however, the matter was before a court. For the Global Council of Indian Christians, “Christians are a discriminated minority”.

Rev Vinod Kumar, a former Hindu who became an Evangelical leader, was ostensibly killed out of “animosity”. Meanwhile, 15 rural Dalit families who became Christian were forced to “reconvert”.

John Barla becomes a Minister of State in the Ministry of Minority Affairs in a major cabinet reshuffle sparked by criticism over the government’s handling of the pandemic. A former tea plantation workers leader, Barla was elected in 2019 to the lower house of parliament with the BJP. For Archbishop Barwa of Bhubaneswar, the new minister “has the task to be the voice of the lost, the least, the last”.

Fellow Jesuits pay tribute to their confrere who died at the age of 84 after a long period of incarceration prison. A friend, Fr Mascarenhas remembers how he was “inspired after Fr Stan’s stint as director, when he went to work with” the marginalised in Ranchi. For writer Arundhati Roy, his slow murder “is a microcosm of the not-so slow-murder” of Indian democracy.

In the city of Raipur, a crowd of nationalists attacked the community of Pastor Firoz Bagh, who was detained by police for a few hours on charges of false conversion. “My church is a registered organisation,” Pastor Bagh said. “I have preached for 20 years,” he added. Now someone is trying to stop him while his coreligionists are being threatened.

The 84-year-old Jesuit, who was arrested on charges of “terrorism” for defending the rights of tribal communities in the state of Jharkhand, died today in a Mumbai hospital after contracting COVID-19 in prison. Saddened and anguished, Indian Jesuits will “take forward” his legacy.

Court ruling follows a petition on behalf of unemployed migrants who could not return to their villages due to the pandemic. The court calls on local governments to ensure food security for everyone in the country. For Jesuit clergyman, Father Jothi, the lack of papers should not be used to let those most in need go hungry.