By Matters India Reporter

Panaji: The Catholic Church in Goa on June 5 maintained that the media and others have misread a pastoral letter of Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao that has become a raging topic for television debates in India.

“One or two statements of the bishop have been taken out and I will say taken out of context and made an issue out of,” secretary to the archbishop Father Joaquim Loiola Pereira told reporters in Panjai, Goa state capital on June 5, a day after the pastoral letter became public.

The archbishop’s secretary also clarified that the main focus of the letter was on various kinds of poverty.

“This year the issue which is focused is poverty. Poverty in different forms, it’s not only economic poverty, persons who are dying of hunger and poverty which is emotional,” Father Loiola Pereira said.

“People who are abandoned by their own family, people who are abused in their own family, maybe children are being abused by their elders, all these ostracisms, these are all different forms of poverty which the bishop wants the church in Goa to address during this year,” he added.

The Goa archbishop issues a pastoral letter at the beginning of the pastoral year (June 1 to May 31) and highlights issues that are important to the archdiocese.

Refusing to make “any further comments and explanations of the letter,” Father Pereira asked those interested to read the entire pastoral letter online and “try to understand the context why it is being said, what is said.”

The more than 6,000-word pastoral letter dated May 20 was read in all parishes in the archdiocese on June 3.

The pastoral letter says the Indian Constitution was in danger and that a “new trend” of mono-culturalism, which demands uniformity in what and how one eats, dresses, lives and even worships, was putting human rights at risk.

The 65-year-old archbishop also laments that the candidates at the time of election confuse many people with “false promises. And the people, on their part, often sell their precious vote for selfish, petty gain.”

The prelate wants people to strive to know the country’s Constitution better and work harder to protect it, especially when the general elections are approaching.

“Today, our Constitution is in danger, (it is a) reason why most of the people live in insecurity,” Ferrao said in his pastoral letter for 2018-2019.

The pastoral letter is an annual letter written in June by archbishop to parishes across Goa where Catholics form 26 percent of the state’s 1.5 million population.

The Goa archbishop’s pastoral letter almost a month after his counterpart in Delhi, Archbishop Anil Couto, raked up a massive controversy by urging his people to pray and fast for the nation that was going through “turbulent” times.

Archbishop Couto’s May 8 letter also noted that turbulent political atmosphere posed a threat to the democratic principles “enshrined in our Constitution and the secular fabric of our nation.” He urged his people skip a meal on Fridays and conduct an hour of Adoration of the Eucharist for a year.

The Goa archbishop says India’s Constitution is in danger and that many people now live in an atmosphere of insecurity. The archbishop also regrets that human rights are under attack and democracy appears to be in peril.

The letter is addressed to “the priests, religious, lay faithful and people of good will in the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman.

Archbishop Ferrao also regrets the decline in respect for law in the country. People, he says, are being uprooted from their land and homes in the name of development and quoted Pope Francis to note that first victim of development is the poor.

“It is easier to trample upon the rights of the poor, because those who will raise their voice for them are very few,” he bemoans.

The archbishop urged Catholics and Church communities to participate in politics and social issues.

“Our parishes and small Christian communities ought to be immersed in this mission of the Church. They should be open to the problems of the world. This social concern should not only remain within the confines of the parish community but should reach out to the whole state and country at large,” Archbishop Ferrao says.