INDIA
The News Minute
Ragamalika Karthikeyan | Saritha S Balan | Friday, March 03, 2017
A minor girl in Kerala was raped and impregnated, allegedly by a priest, and everything in the investigation points to a system that not only allowed this crime to happen, but actively tried to cover it up.
But the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council is completely blind to this problem in their backyard. Instead of taking steps to ensure that priests don’t get away with crime, the council has conveniently said that this case is an ‘exception’ among the 9033 catholic priests in Kerala.
In a reply to TNM’s queries on the issue, Father Paul Thelekat of the Bishops’ Council said, “In India there are 19946 catholic priests and in Kerala 9033 priests. What we discuss is a case of failure of a small minority in living the lofty ideal of celibacy. The fact it is a minority does not make the sin and crime minor. The very fact that it gets news value is that it is an exception and a fall from the ideal.”
The feeble attempt at denouncing the crime is lost in the justification offered by the council for the behaviour of ‘some’. The reply gets more bizarre as the council then puts the blame for sexual violence and child sexual abuse squarely on ‘consumerism’.
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