INDIA
The News Minute
TNM Staff| Sunday, August 21, 2016
Not all is well in the sanctum sanctorum of some of India’s Churches as stories of violence and sexual abuse, fear, deaths, denial of burial rights, suicides and cover-ups start to trickle out slowly but surely. The whistle-blowers in many cases are from within. On July 23, 2013 a 17-year-old from Tamil Nadu who was found dead at the home of a Kerala priest. The grieving mother took the Catholic Church head on resulting in the arrest of five priests including a Bishop. Read here.
The Church preaches charity, kindness and compassion towards everyone but Sr. Mary Sebastian, a 45 year-old nun was afraid the very institution that she has served for a quarter century could turn on her. Reason?
In January this year she decided to quit the Church because of daily harassment by her superiors at the Syro-Malabar Church’s Cherthungal Nasrathubhavan Convent in Pala, Kottayam in Kerala. When she rebelled, she was harassed further, threatened and as she appealed to the appropriate organisations, her rightful pension was denied. Worse, she found herself being accused of harassing children.
“I am scared for my life…they are so powerful that they may even harm me, she had told The News Minute over the telephone. Read here.
Cut to the Coimbatore (Tamil-Nadu) tragedy where Arun Janardhanan of the Indian Express details the heart-breaking and bone-chilling details of an adolescent girl whose faith in the Church, her belief in her preacher who eventually became her tormentor led to her death. In 2013, Fathima Sophia, Shanthi Roselin’s daughter was found dead in the guest room of Father Arockiaraj, the priest of the St. Stanislaus Church in Walayar (Palakkad), a district that shares a border with neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.