INDIA
Crux
By Nirmala Carvalho
Crux Contributor May 10, 2016
MUMBAI — Ordinarily, a Catholic bishop anywhere in the world almost certainly would be delighted to see a spontaneous flowering of devotion to a recently deceased local priest.
The fact that an archbishop in India actually has shut down a parish rather than allow it to host a statue of one such priest, therefore, suggests circumstances in Bangalore are anything but ordinary.
The long-simmering conflict in Bangalore, usually known around the world as India’s IT capital, illustrates how Catholicism here, like the rest of society in the world’s largest democracy, still struggles with often-bitter resentments stoked by class, ethnicity and language.
In turn, it’s also a reminder to Western Catholics of why their perceived priorities sometimes don’t resonate in other parts of the world, which have vastly different fires to put out. …
For one thing, he was one of six priests charged in the sensational 2013 murder of Father K.J. Thomas, at the time the rector of St. Peter’s Pontifical Seminary in Bangalore. According to a police spokesman, evidence shows that Selvaraj took part in crucial meetings when the plot against Thomas was hatched, held a week and then just a day before the murder.
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