Nepal: Korean nuns detained for ‘illegal conversions’ await bail

By Matters India Reporter

Kathmandu, Oct. 29, 2021: Two Catholic nuns from South Korea, who work in slums of Nepal, now wait for the court to reopen after Diwali to get their bail.

Sisters Gemma Lucia Kim and Martha Park Byongsuk, members of the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres Congregation, were arrested September 14 after being accused of converting Hindus by coercion and allurement.

“The Sisters are arrested and are in Pokhara prison. Their bail hearing will likely take place after Deepavali holidays when the court reopens,” a source in Kathmandu told Matters India October 29 on condition of anonymity. He also said that he was “not authorized to say anything more on the matter at the moment.”

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, falls on November 4 this year.

A court had earlier denied the nuns bail.

Pokhara is some 200 km northwest of Kathmandu, Nepal capital, where the two nuns manage “St. Paul’s Happy Home,” a center that provides accommodation, food, education, medical services and skills training to about 120 slum children at Bus-Park in Pokhara. The home is named St. Paul’s in honor of their congregation’s patron.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the nuns distributed food rations to vulnerable people, but some locals accused them of alluring them to become Catholics by giving low-quality food, reports the Vatican News.

Bishop Paul Simick, the Apostolic Vicar of Nepal, has told Aid to the Church in Need that the nuns’ arrest and denial of bail has shocked the Nepalese Catholic community. The allegations against the nuns “are utterly baseless and unjust,” he asserted.

The prelate clarified that Catholics do not indulge in forceful conversion and “the Korean sisters are known for doing exclusively social work.”

The nuns, he added, “have been dedicating themselves totally to the poor for many years.”

At the same the nuns are “very calm and serene” in jail, Bishop Simick said. However, the prelate is “worried about their health as both are elderly.”

Catholics in Nepal view the incident as an attack on minority communities, and an attempt to criminalize particularly Christian missionary activities such as social services, providing education, and health care, which could be construed as an allurement for conversion, Bishop Simick explained.

Christians account for 1.4 percent of Nepal’s nearly 30 million population. In recent years churches have been experiencing growing hostility and intolerance in the Himalayan Hindu-majority nation.

According to ACN Religious Freedom Report 2021, legal and social pressures on the minority Christian community have increased after the adoption of the new Constitution in 2015 and the new Penal Code outlawing proselytism.

A number of foreign priests and religious sisters were denied visas and had to leave the country.

Sister Byongsuk, popularly called “Sister Martha,” used to walk the narrow lanes of slums with a sling bag hung at her back containing a stethoscope and blood pressure monitoring equipment.

The 71-year-old nun entered the slums in March 2009. Until then, people were devoid of resources and children could not go to school and people had no access to health care facilities.

The children now have nutritious food and medical treatment and go to school. Impoverished children receive scholarships to continue their schooling.

Sister Byongsuk told Global Sisters Report in 2019 that she came to Nepal to serve the people by setting up small clinics. They came to Pokhara to open a clinic at the invitation of Father Lawrence Maniyar, who was then regional superior of the Jesuits in Nepal.

“On the first day, I carried a first-aid box and a blood pressure monitor and walked through the Bus-Park slum of Pokhara,” Sister Byongsuk recalled in that interview.

She was shocked to see the slums dirty and people living with no clean drinking water and sufficient food.

For six months, she and her sisters organized weeklong medical camps for the Bus-Park residents, with the help of 30 doctors and assistants from the Seoul Diocesan Peacemaker Foundation medical college in Korea.

According to her, hygiene and cleanliness in slums were her most import focus areas

Happy Home has 12 staff members who take care of all the children’s needs.

Sister Byongsuk then turned her attention to the care of the parents, organizing regular health camps and teaching them ways to keep their homes tidy.

With the help of Korean volunteers, she built 10 toilets in the slum, and the government has built others to improve the situation.

To provide employment for the mothers in the slum, Byongsuk has set up a tailoring center to train them.