By Purushottam Nayak
Partoma, March 5, 2020: More than 35,000 people who on March 5 attended a Marian festival in a village under Kandhamal district of Odisha prayed for the victims of the recent sectarian violence in the national capital.
“The victims of the Delhi riot are suffering like what our people in Kandhamal had undergone in 2008. Let us ask the Lord through Mother Mary for peace and harmony in our country,” said Bishop Sarat Chandra Nayak of Berhampur who led the festival Mass at a Marian shrine in Partoma, a substation of Our Lady of Rosary Parish, Daringbadi parish.
The shrine at Partoma is the only Marian pilgrimage center in the Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar. The shrine is some 250 km southwest of Bhubaneswar, the state capital.
The shrine was erected in 1994 in response to a Marian apparition to a Hindu woman.
In Delhi, at least 47 people were killed and more than 200 wounded after mobs targeted Muslims in the capital’s northeast areas. The violence was reportedly to suppress protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act that many see as discriminatory and the first step toward making India into a Hindu theocratic nation.
The 2008 anti-Christian violence in Odisha was triggered by the assassination of a Hindu religious leader in Kandhamal. Hindu rightwing groups blamed Christians for the murder despite Maoists claiming responsibility. The mayhem lasted more than four months and destroyed several churches and Christian institutions and rendered 56,000 people homeless.
Bishop Nayak said it is Christians’ duty to pray their country and its people, as everyone belongs to the family of God. He urged the Marian devotees to intercede with Mother Mary to bring peace to the riot victims of Delhi and other suffering elsewhere.
Narrating the story of Esther in the Old Testament, the bishop said the queen saved her Jewish people from Persian king Ahasuerus. “She wept and pleaded in front of the king to save Jews. The same way Mother Mary’s intercession can be heard by Lord Jesus Christ. Because she is righteous in front of God,” Bishop Nayak said in his homily.
He told the Kandhamal Christians that their faith in Christ has become stronger after the persecution. “We have become model and inspiration to the whole world through Mother Mary. She is health of the sick, queen of martyrs, help of Christians, comforter of the afflicted and queen of peace affirmed the prelate,” he added.
Sikandar Singh, a member of the parish liturgical committee, narrated the shrine’s origin. A Hindu widow, Kamoladevi, went to Partama Mountain to collect wood on March 5, 1994. She saw a man in white dress sporting beard and long hair coming closer to her. He disappeared after sometimes.
Then a beautiful woman from distance called the widow and told her to request the local Catholic priest to build a church to pray rosary for the sinners to repent.
The woman’s Hindu neighbors laughed at her when she first shared the experience with them.
Another day, a 12-year-boy came to Kamoladevi and asked her to go to the mountain. When she went there the woman appeared and told her, “I am Mother of Jesus, pray Rosary daily to build the Kingdom of God where peace, joy, love, justice, truth and fraternity will be established.”
The woman took courage and told the then parish priest Father Alphonse Baliarsingh her experience. The priest made a committee and built a small grotto near a Banayan tree where Mother Mary had appeared.
People soon began flocking to the mountain that was renamed “Mother Mary of Partama.” Kamoladevi was later baptized as Agnes.
Father Mukundadev Baliarsingh, the current parish priest, says hundreds of pilgrims now visit the share.
Khusirani Baliarsingh, one of the devotees to light candles in front of the Marian statue, told Matters India that she was only seven when the anti-Christian violence shattered her family.
“I was crying at that time of anti-Christian violence but now I am singing and glorifying God with pride,” said the young girl who has completed her bachelor’s degree.
“It is through the intercession of Mother Mary I have come up to this stage,” she added.