By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, March 29, 2020: India’s more than 115,000 Catholic religious men and women have been urged to reach out to the poor affected by a 21-day national lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We need to move fast. This is an emergency,” says Father Joe Mannath, national secretary of the Conference of Religious India (CRI), the association of the major superiors.
In a March 29 letter to the heads of more than 550 congregations for men and women serving India, the Salesian priest says they should not wait for “perfect or easier” way to help hundreds of thousands poor migrant laborers stranded by the lockdown at various parts of the country.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown at 8 pm on March 24, just four hours before it was imposed all over the country, taking millions of migrant workers off guard.
Father Joe Mannath says the migrant workers, who now struggle to get back to their home states, urgently require provide shelter and food.
“God waits for our response. He is suffering in our suffering brothers and sisters,” says the CRI official’s letter that lists of a set of “dos” and “don’ts” for the religious to follow to protect from the highly contagious virus.
As on March 29, the coronavirus affected a total of 1,024 people across India. A federal Home Ministry statement said the epidemic has also claimed 27 lives so far.
Father Mannath justifies the “drastic steps taken by governments” as Covid-19 has no vaccine or medicine.
The new virus, he says, has shaken even the wealthier countries that had imagined that such a medical emergency would hit them. The pandemic “has rattled everyone, everywhere,” he says.
“There is also another tragedy or “pandemic” caused by this virus and our response to it. In a country where 9 out of 10 workers are employed in the unorganized sector—with no insurance or permanent job or pension—the closing down of business meant: No job, no salary, no food. Plus, often, no place to stay.”
As the religious take steps to protect themselves from the virus, they should also reach out to the poor, “who, unlike us, are truly in a helpless and even desperate situation.”
He commended a number of Institutes and persons who help the affected people.
Among them is Montfort Brother Varghese Theckanath, director of Montfort Social Institute in Hyderabad, who feeds more than 500 scavengers in collaboration with government agencies and police officials.
Christian Brother Steve Rocha of New Delhi’s Columba’s School now feeds 4,000 vulnerable families of children associated with children’s parliaments.
Father Anand Mathew and other priests of the Indian Missionary Society provide food and other essentials to 400 people stranded in railway stations, bus stands. They also feed more than 100 families daily.
The Bangalore province of the Salesians has put the Don Bosco College in Kerala’s Angadikkadavu at the disposal of the state government to keep the sick. They also make masks and prepare kits with rice, pulses to distribute to the poor in several places. Their counterparts in Hyderabad province produce masks for free distribution. They too distribute kits with essentials in different parts of Andhra and Telangana.
Similarly, the Archdiocese of Bangalore too has set apart some schools for the sick.
In Meghalaya, northeastern India, sister nurses from different congregations have come together to care for the sick.
Father Mannath reminds his people that the Church, the religious, were in the forefront to help people when the world witnessed epidemics in the past — the 14h century plague and the “Spanish Flu” of 1917‐1920.
“In every situation we face, God has a message for us, which we need to hear, and respond to. The question facing us, Church in India (and elsewhere), especially its leadership and its special cadre (priests and religious) is: What is God asking us to do? How are we supposed to respond?,” the letter says.