By Robancy A Helen
Trichy, Feb 8, 2022: Dalit Catholic groups in India have welcomed Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli’s appreciation of their demands and his support to the Church’s Dalit policy.
‘I appreciate the immediate response of the apostolic nuncio to India,” Mathew Gnanapragasam, convener of the Tamil Nadu Dalit Christian Collation, said February 8, a day after the nunciature clarified news reports in some Catholic media outlets.
The reports said the nuncio disappointed the Dalit Catholic groups that had met him February 2 at Vellore in Tamil Nadu.
The nunciature “fully supports (the policy) and recommends its implementation,” says the statement from the Vatican embassy in India.
Gnanapragasam says the previous nuncios had not responded to several memorandums of the Dalit Christians in India. “But Archbishop Girelli’s response is highly appreciated,” he told Matters India.
The nuncio met the Dalit groups when he was invited to consecrate the altar and the renovated Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in Chetpet near Chennai, capital of the southern Indian state. The shrine comes under the diocese of Vellore.
During the visit, the nuncio met the leaders of the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement and a delegation of priests from the Archdiocese of Pondicherry-Cuddalore at the Vellore Bishop’s House.
The delegations later said they were disappointed with their meeting with the nuncio.
The nunciature then clarified that Archbishop Girelli had “listened attentively to the grievances presented” by the delegations as he was willing to “understand more the reality of the Dalit Catholic” community.
The nuncio also acknowledged the existence of caste discrimination in the Indian Catholic Church and pointed out that the Dalits who form the majority of the Catholics in India are the most oppressed, says Shalin Maria Lawrence, a Dalit Christian woman activist and a writer based in Chennai.
She said the nunciature’s statement was “open and honest” after so many years of the Vatican embassy “ignoring the caste evil in the Catholic community” in India.
Maria Lawrence, however, finds contradiction in the nunciature’s statement. The data about Dalit representation in the administration positions of the Indian Catholic Church shows a different picture. The facts and figures clearly show that caste discrimination has been practiced while appointing bishops in India,” she told Matters India.
Maria Lawrence says the Dalit Catholics request for bishops from their community not to get their men in “position of power,” as the nunciature clarification alleges. Rather they want Dalit bishops as a matter of “equal representation” and to correct a “human rights violation.”
She also explains that discrimination of Dalits for bishop’s post violates the laws of the Church and the world. The appointment of bishops from dominant castes affects the Church’s service to its faithful, she alleges.
“The dominant caste bishops overlook the welfare and needs of the Church which has the majority Dalit population. They do not practice or preach equality within the Church which goes against the core of the Christian values,” Maria Lawrence asserts.
Gnanapragasam says the Indian Catholic Church’s Dalit Policy of 2016 admits the caste discrimination in the Church. But no efforts have been taken to appoint bishops from the community, he says.
Another Dalit leader Father S Lourdusamy says the nuncio erred when he stated there was no discrimination in the appointment of bishops. “In the past 15 years, only one bishop from the Dalit community was appointed in Tamil Nadu,” points out the former executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India’s Commission for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes.
However, he is happy that the nuncio has responded to Dalit Christian issue in public. The nuncio’s “statement is historical and the Dalit Christian community in India must be thankful for this noble gesture,” he says, but recalls that Dalit groups have submitted several memorandums to the nunciature in the past 30 years.
“While thanking the nuncio, we humbly request him to ask the bishops in India to propose the eligible Dalit candidates from their own dioceses. As he mentioned in the statement we want that his Excellency gives special consideration to the Dalit candidates who have been neglected in the past several years,” Father Lourdusamy told Matters India.