By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: A Catholic nun, who has exhausted all avenues of appeal against her dismissal from her congregation, says she will not leave her convent until an Indian court decides her petition.
The Franciscan Clarist Congregation on June 13 ordered Sister Lucy Kalapura to vacate the convent in Kakkamala in the Wayanad district of Kerala after the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal categorically dismissed her revision petition against her dismissal.
“My case will come up in the Indian court in June or July this year,” Sister Lucy Kalapura told Matters India June 14 through a WhatsApp voice message.
Kalapura said the court could not take up her case of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown. “The judge was not available so far,” she added.
Two years ago, a court in Wayanad reportedly stayed Kalapura’s eviction from the Kakkamala convent. The Kerala High Court on July 9, 2018, granted her police protection.
Commenting on the Vatican’s latest action, Kalapura told reporters, “The letter is in Latin but the covering letter spells out the decision. The details will be available only after the letter is translated but it is dated 2020.” She further said, “The recent revision of Church laws regarding abuse of minors, vulnerable adults, and fraud gave us hope. But it seems the papal head is not getting a clear picture. ”
Kalapura said she will continue her battle against the “corrupt practices” of the Church. The 55-year-old nun alleged that she was targeted after she demanded the arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar Mulakkal, who was accused of raping a nun multiple times. The case is being tried in a court in Kottayam.
Kalapura had joined a sit-in demonstration organized by the alleged rape victim’s supports in September 2018 near the Kerala High Court in Kochi. The congregation alleged moved against her after this public protest.
Sister Ann Joseph, the superior general of the Kerala-based Franciscan congregation, wrote to Kalapura June 13 explaining that the Vatican Supreme Tribunal’s May 27 judgment “means that there is no further legal remedy available to you to challenge your dismissal within the Catholic legal system.”
Sister Joseph’s letter further pointed out Kalapura has exhausted all the three levels of appeal within the Catholic legal system.
“I would like to bring to your kind attention the fact that your right to continue as a member of the FCC is now definitively and irrevocably extinguished, and hence you lost your right to use the suffix FCC to your name and you no longer have the right and duty to wear the religious habit of the Franciscan Clarist Congregation hereafter,” the superior general asserted.
Sister Joseph also told Kalapura that the congregation cannot allow a “non-member” to live in its convents and that her continued stay in the convent is unlawful.
“There are only two exceptions possible: (1) our workers can be permitted in the quarters demarcated for them; (2) in our guest rooms attached to our houses, if any, our guests can be permitted to stay for a while. You are no more a member of FCC, and you are not one of our invited guests and you are not in the list of our workers,” the superior general explains in the letter.
Kalapura told media persons on June 14 that it was two days back that she received a letter from her higher ups that her appeal to the Vatican was dismissed.
“How is it possible when the letter that I was given was dated May 27, 2020. I was not even heard by the Vatican, which is a denial of natural justice. I have been asked to move out from the Convent where I am staying in a week’s time. I am not going to move out,” she added.