KOCHI (UCAN): Monsoon rain, pouring down since August 7, triggered flash floods and landslides in India’s Kerala state claiming at least 23 lives, and washing away homes, as government agencies and voluntary groups rushed aid to the area.
 
Army, navy and air force personnel were called in to help police and residents manage the disaster in the worst-affected six districts in the central and northern hilly areas of the southern Indian state.
 

New Delhi (UCAN): “Some people are trying to divide the country in the name of religion, caste and creed. But we can’t sit here as mute spectators,” Mamta Banerjee, chief of Trinamool (grassroots) Congress party, told a gathering of 1,000 people in New Delhi, India, on July 31.
 
The assembly was organised on the theme, Love your neighbour, by the Indian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and called on the country’s to stop being divisive and using religion as a way of attracting votes.
 

NEW DEHLI (Agencies): “This demand is absurd and it displays ignorance about the sacrament of confession,” said Oswald Cardinal Gracias of Mumbai, president of Catholic Bishops Conference of India, reacting to a proposal by the National Commission for Women, an Indian federal agency, to abolish the sacrament of confession CNS reported.
 

Bhopal (UCAN): Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas, secretary-general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, called on the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, to intervene and stop the harassment of Christians after the state of Jharkhand ordered a probe into the funding of more than 80 Christian organisations.
 

KOCHI (UCAN): After the High Court of Kerala, India dismissed a case against George Cardinal Alencherry over a land deal that has rocked the Church for more than a year, priests have submitted a formal request for the Pope Francis to look into the matter.
 

SRINAGAR (UCAN): The United States (US) Commission on International Religious Freedom has accused the Indian government of doing little to prevent violence against religious minorities and socially poor Dalit people.
 
The commission’s latest report, released on April 25, said the government of prime minister, Narendra Damodardas Modi, of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has not addressed the problem of sectarian violence despite government statistics showing that sectarian violence has increased sharply over the past two years.

BHOPAL (UCAN): On March 15, three days after suspected Hindu activists demolished the boundary wall of the 44-year-old Pushpa Mission Hospital in Ujjain town in Madhya Pradesh province, in central India, the local authority issued a prohibitory order to check tension and further activities in the disputed area.
 

BANGALORE (CNS): “Intolerance is causing a certain amount of anxiety to us,” Oswald Cardinal Gracias of Mumbai, said at the end of the February 2 to 9 assembly of Indian bishops held in Bangalore.
 
The newly elected president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), expressed “anguish” over increasing threats to pluralism in the country.
 

NEW DEHLI (UCAN): India’s pro-Hindu government presented detailed data in parliament showing a surge in religion-based violence since it came to power four years ago. The statistics, revealed on February 6, confirm a long-standing allegation by rights groups that the situation is worsening.
 
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the coalition government, has been accused by rights groups and civil society of fanning the flames of intolerance.

BANGALORE (CNS): “Poverty is the mortal sin of modern times. It is the biggest terrorism and evil that needs to be fought by the Church,” said Cardinal Charles Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, Myanmar. He was delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the 33rd general body meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) that began in Bengaluru on February 2 on the theme, United in diversity for a mission of mercy and witness.