New Delhi: The publication of a rape accused bishop’s picture with Pope Francis in a feast day greeting has upset a group of Catholic women in India.
A press release issued by Sisters in Solidarity on October 6 says its members “are perturbed to see a greeting that is being circulated on the occasion of the feast of St. Francis of Assisi where the picture of Bishop Franco Mulakkal is put alongside with Pope Francis.”
The feast was on October 4.
Bishop Mulakkal is accused of raping a Catholic nun 13 times between 2014 and 2016 and the case is being tried in a court in Kottayam, Kerala. The Vatican in September 2018 accepted Bishop Mulakkal’s request to relieve him from the bishop’s duties to face the case and appointed an apostolic administrator.
The group of Catholic women, “who are in solidarity with the survivors of sexual and other forms of gendered violence in the Church in their struggle for justice,” says the feast day greeting sends out “a wrong signal to the people of the diocese and beyond, especially in (the bishop’s) home state of Kerala.”
Meanwhile Bishop Mulakkal has dissociated from the publication of the feast day greeting. Asked if he had released the picture, he told Matters India, “No. I am in Kerala. It is the cathedral.”
Father Michael Anikuzhikkattil, a senior priest of Jalandhar diocese, told Matters India that the picture was released by the Marian Arts, a wing of the diocese’s Liturgy Commission.
However, the Catholic women’s solidarity says the feast day greeting and the latest directory of Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) have misled people.
The directory lists Mulakkal as the Jalandhar bishop.
“The CBCI 2020 directory published earlier this year and this ‘greeting’ are ways in which both the Jalandhar Diocese and the CBCI are legitimizing Franco’s position and projecting his acceptance as bishop,” the solidarity statement says.
With the directory “showcasing Franco as the bishop, there is no stopping of visuals with ‘greetings’ from Bishop Franco even by others,” the women point out.
The statement says the women’s group has alerted different Church leaders about their concern over Bishop Mulakkal’s continued association with the Jalandhar diocese. “especially at the time when he has become the first bishop to face trial in an alleged rape case of a nun.”
“We are concerned that he continues to hold the position of the Bishop of Jalandhar with the right to reside in the Bishops’ House, although there is an Apostolic Administrator appointed for the diocese. We fear that his position as bishop of Jalandhar gives him leverage to intimidate the survivor and the witnesses in the ongoing trial,” the solidarity statement says.
The women’s group says ordinary people “are not aware of all these technicalities in the functioning in the Church as they go according to images, and visual communications sent to them like the greetings.”
Such people tend to side with their bishop since they have been taught to revere their shepherd who stands in the place of God, the women explained. They will also defend the bishop and join in intimidating the rape survivor and her supporters and witnesses in the case.
The statement recalls the women writing to Church leaders in India, to the Vatican representative in India, and even to the Pope to remove Mulakkal as Bishop of Jalandhar so that the trial can go on freely and fairly.
“We are distraught to find that up to now there has been no action on the part of the Church, except intimation by the administrator of the technicality of his position with its limitations,” the statement points out.
The solidarity says it realizes that women’s position in the Church “continues to be second class and subject to the position of the male leaders which is contrary to what Jesus intended.”
Jesus, the women point out, constantly broke rules and laws during his time to uplift women, restore their dignity, and put them on par with the male disciples, hence he chose a woman to be the herald of the good news of his resurrection.
“Sadly, in the 21st century, women have been relegated to a status that is subject to the male leaders in the Church even when these male leaders have been accused of abuse of their power and position,” the solidarity says.