Indian persecution

Dear Editor,

I wish to bring to the kind notice of your readers the unpleasant situation of Christians being persecuted in some parts of India, my country, by some fanatically Hindu religious political group and thus to request their prayers for peace in the affected areas.

I, a priest from the Diocese of Dindigul, South India, am very much pained to hear and to read through the various sources about the persecutions being meted to the Christians of the state of Orissa, Central India.

The recent troubles against the Christian communities let loose following the Aug. 23 murder of a Hindu leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati by Moist extremists (The major religion in India is Hinduism.)

Basing this event an occasion, Hindu mobs started attacking Christian centers in Kandhamal, the district where the slain leader was based; now the violence has spread throughout Orissa and in many parts outside of this state. The persecutions against the Christians are systematically carried out, visibly or invisibly, in different forms.

I, along with the priests and religious of India working in America and the Christian communities living here, are deeply grieved over this tragedy and express our sense of sympathy and solidarity and our prayers to all the Christian brothers and sisters who underwent the experiences of "tortured for Christ" in the Indian soil.

Our former Pope John Paul II once said that the Word of God would spread in India through persecutions like in the early Church. We are privileged to have this blessing of the spread of God's Kingdom in our soil; though, humanly speaking, it involves much struggle and experience of pain on our part.

We only pray that God may fill us, the disciples of Jesus in India, with a spirit of evangelization and perseverance to bear witness to the Life and Good News of Jesus, our Savior and Master.

The Rev. M. Peter Amaladoss

Associate Pastor,

St Patrick Church

McCook