Aid to the Church in Need: India: A time for healing after Orissa violence

India: A time for healing after Orissa violence

Posted by Press release on 23/6/2009, 12:26 pm
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ACN News, Tuesday, 23rd June 2009 – INDIA

A time for healing

By John Newton

A LEADING centre for interreligious dialogue in India is to help Christians respond to last year’s violence in Orissa, east India.
Fr Cleophas Fernandes, director of the National Biblical Catechetical and Liturgical Centre (NBCLC), said that the institute will do all it can to help inter-faith experts address problems caused by the attacks on Christians, in which about 80 people died and nearly 30,000 were displaced.
It comes as Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Vatican’s pontifical council for interreligious dialogue reported that a meeting between Hindu and Catholic leaders in Mumbai (Bombay) on 12th June had opened a new era.
Now, in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, Fr Fernandes of the NBCLC has called for more to be done to improve relations with Hindus.
He said: “After the attacks on Christians we need to re-intensify inter-religious dialogue: Christians lost their openness.”
Fr Fernandes added that a number of questions face the Catholics of India following the violence of August/September 2008.
He went on: “How does a Christian react to fundamentalism? How does a Christian react to these attacks? Do we close up or look at it in a new way?”
Addressing the deep sense of unease felt by those involved in inter-faith work following last year’s pogroms, he said: “We need to create a platform for people to come together, to overcome any feelings of disillusionment caused by the attacks.”
He said: “One way would be to invite those involved in interreligious dialogue to gather together.”
Fr Cleophas announced the centre in Bangalore could try to improve relations between Christians and Hindus by hosting such meetings.
He added “The centre can become a platform for reflection in these areas.”
Interreligious dialogue has been one of the main aims of India’s National Biblical Catechetical and Liturgical Centre since it was founded 43 years ago, shortly after ago after the Second Vatican Council.
Fr Cleophas said: “We have been a pioneering centre – especially in religious dialogue and inculturation.”
As religious dialogue has taken on a new urgency in India, ACN is sponsoring peace-building programmes in the eastern diocese of Chuttack-Bhubaneswar.

Fr Cleophas Fernandes (Photo: ACN)

Organised under the leadership of Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, these workshops have run in places where Christians were still thought to be at risk.
As part of these projects, all groups – especially young people – have been encouraged to take part in joint activities to help rebuild trust and cooperation.
In an interview with Vatican Radio, Cardinal Tauran from the Vatican interreligious dialogue council said that meetings with Hindu leaders had opened a new chapter in relations.
Jayendra Saraswathi, head of the Hindu Kanchi matha monastic institution, called on Church leaders to denounce “forced conversions” of Hindus, saying that this had prompted the attacks in Orissa.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai, stressed that forced conversions were “considered invalid” by the Catholic Church and Cardinal Tauran underlined that some Protestants were far more assertive in their evangelisation work than most other Christians.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 130 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 46.5 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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