Posted on 09/02/2008 4:36:03 PM PDT by tcg
On Friday, August 29, 2008 the 25,000 Catholic schools in India closed their doors for the entire day. The Indian Catholic Church has called for a day of prayer and fasting for the first Sunday in September, with peaceful processions all over the country.
The reason is the new wave of violence that has struck the Christians in the state of Orissa. Every day, there is news of killing, wounding, rape, assaults against churches, convents, schools, orphanages, villages, carried out by Hindu fanatics. Thousands of people have had to abandon their homes and flee to the forests.
The spark for the latest explosion of violence was struck with the killing, on August 23, of the Hindu religious leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and five of his followers. The killing was carried out by armed Maoist groups, but the Hindus used it as a pretext for blaming the Christians and taking revenge on them.
The epicenter of the latest violence is the district of Kandhamal, in the state of Orissa. For several months, this has been the most bloodstained state in the country. What is unleashing the violence – according to Raphael Cheenath, the archbishop of Chuttack-Bhubaneswar, whose territory includes the district of Kandhamal – is the work that Christians in Orissa are carrying out on behalf of the tribals and the Dalits, at the very bottom of the caste system:
"Before, they were like slaves. Now, some of them study in our schools, start businesses in the villages, demand their rights. And those who – even in the India of the economic boom – want to keep intact the old division into castes are afraid "
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...
“To the silence and disinterest of the world.”
May God forgive us!
Nevertheless, that doesn't excuse the disgusting behavior of the Hindu militants.
India’s Christians Suffer and Die While the World Watches
***And while America outsources our jobs to India, don’t forget.
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