INDIA
HuffPost India
January 31, 2019
By Piyasree Dasgupta and Meryl Sebastian
Going against the church is equivalent to going against the entire society for nuns, but Lucy Kalapura is not perturbed.
When Bishop Franco Mulakkal returned to the Jalandhar diocese in October after spending 21 days in jail, his supporters welcomed him back with massive garlands and showers of rose petals. As images of the hero’s welcome given to the rape-accused priest filled her TV screen and social media timeline, something snapped in sister Lucy Kalapura.
The 52 year old, who has been a nun for more than three decades, had often heard stories of powerful men of the cloth sexually abusing women and sometimes children. But the Mulakkal case shook her.
“I couldn’t believe how relentless it was. I heard the man raped her 13 times,” Kalapura told HuffPost India.
It was in June 2018 that a nun from a convent in Kottayam’s Kuruvilangad filed a police complaint, accusing Mulakkal of sexually abusing her multiple times between 2014 and 2016.
As news of the assault broke, a few nuns from the survivor’s congregation, the Missionaries of Jesus, began protesting, demanding that action be taken against Mulakkal.
Kalapura waited, expecting more women from convents to take to the streets to demand Mulakkal’s arrest.
“Forget the Bishop being arrested, I realised more and more women were going against the nun who complained,” said Kalapura, who belongs to the Franciscan Clarist Congregation.
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