Dalit Christians in southern India were left “disappointed and disheartened” after their meeting with the papal representative to demand an end to caste discrimination within the Church.
“He listened to our plight and demands very attentively but he did not commit anything. He was evasive on the question of ending caste discrimination against Dalits in the Catholic Church of India,” Mary John, president of the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM), told UCA News.
The DCLM delegation met Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli, the apostolic nuncio to India and Nepal, on Feb. 2 at Vellore in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
They appealed to the papal representative to appoint a Dalit as the head of the Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore, a post which has been lying vacant. John said his response to that issue and the appointment of priests was “evasive and non-committal.”
“The delegates were left highly disappointed with the nuncio’s responses, which showed a lack of understanding and grasp of the situation in India,” the Dalit Christian leader said.
John elaborated that “the delegation felt instead of accepting the grievances and sufferings of Dalit Christians and the truth of caste discrimination and assuring of some concrete intervention with the Indian Catholic hierarchy, the papal nuncio refused to commit himself on any issue.”
We realized that our silence, pious hope and prayerful appeals for decades and centuries have only defeated or buried justice for our cause
He seemed to be unaware of even the policy of Dalit empowerment adopted by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI), which has accepted the truth of rampant caste-based discrimination against Dalits within the Church, John alleged.
The DCLM submitted a memorandum of their demands to Archbishop Girelli, cautioning that turmoil would arise within the Church if their grievances were not addressed, especially over the appointments of priests and bishops.
After the meeting, the delegates felt Dalit Christians must intensify their public protests to question the very process and procedure of appointing Catholic bishops in India by Pope Francis.
John alleged that the appointments were influenced by “nepotism and discrimination,” especially in the southern Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry region “with only non-Dalits being considered for the posts of bishops and archbishops.”
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There is only one Dalit bishop in the 18 Catholic dioceses in the region even though Dalits comprise about 75 percent of Catholics, John said.
The DCLM has been consistently raising this issue for the past three decades with numerous letters and appeals to the Vatican and India’s Catholic hierarchy.
Its public protests have intensified in the past few years, said John, as “we realized that our silence, pious hope and prayerful appeals for decades and centuries have only defeated or buried justice for our cause.”
Some 60 percent of India’s 25 million Christians are believed to be of Dalit and tribal origin.
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