Bengaluru: Bangalore archdiocese in southern Indian continues to face tension over the closure of a parish.
In the latest turn of events on July 10, some protesting parishioners have brought the body of a 65-year-old woman and kept it inside St. Paul the Hermit Church in Vishwanatha Nagenahalli parish.
Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore had shut down the parish on April 21 after a section of parishioners put up the bust of a controversial priest inside the church campus. The archbishop had made alternate arrangements in neighboring Church of St. James in Marianpalaya for the spiritual needs of the members of the closed church.
However, the protesters have alleged that the archdiocese has denied funeral rites to Chinnamma Chowrappa, who died on July 10. They have refused to move the body from the church, which is on the outskirts of Bengaluru, the capital of city of Karnataka state.
They have also refused alternate arrangements for the funeral and accused the archbishop of dishonoring the deceased woman and denying Catholics their rights.
To counter the allegations, archdiocesan spokesperson Fr A S Anthonyswamy issued a clarification on July 12. He dismissed the allegations as a “blatant lie aimed at creating communal tension.”
The priest points out that the archbishop had communicated the alternate arrangements for the spiritual needs of the closed parishioners on May 2. “He has done so by virtue of his office and with deep personal spiritual concern for the spiritual needs of all the church members,” says the press release.
Fr Anthonyswamy regrets that the protesters “are whipping up communal tension in society” by keeping the woman’s body inside the church that was canonically shut down.
“Some of the agitators/protestors are ill-informed or misinformed and not in any way associated with the Church pastoral and temporal administration,” the priest says.
The priest also accused the protestors of making “highly insensitive, perverted and misdirected statements in public and in the media, falsely accusing the archbishop.”
The spokesperson clarified that the archbishop had followed the canon law to close the parish. According to Canon law 1187, only a saint or blessed can be honored in a church by the installing his or her statue, bust or image.
Such installation requires the local bishop’s “explicit consent or permission,” the spokesperson clarifies.
Fr Anthonyswamy says the archbishop ordered the parish closure “with great pain” for the interest of the whole church. The archbishop has clarified that he would open the parish only after the controversial bust is removed.
He says the parishioners had installed the bust of Bangalore archdiocesan priest Chowrappa Selvaraj, popularly known as Fr Chasara, ignoring official public warning and notice to the serving parish priest. “Despite being fully made aware of the rightful closure of the church, some protestors have also been fanning flames of disharmony by hunger-strike, demanding reopening of the Church,” the spokesperson alleges.
Fr Chasara, who was the leader of the Kannadiga faction in the archdiocese, died on March 16 after battling several illnesses. He was 60.
The popular Kannada preacher and writer led the Akhila Karnataka Catholic Kristhara Kannada Sangha (All Karnataka Catholic Christian Union). He was among six priests charge-sheeted in the murder of Fr K J Thomas, rector of St Peter’s Pontifical Seminary, on April 1, 2013.
Meanwhile on June 20, the Bangalore’s City Civil and Sessions Court issued an interim injunction restraining the archdiocese from denying parishioners access to the church.