By Matters India Reporter
Kothamangalam, April 2, 2022: Another mysterious death of a novice nun was reported from Kerala, the southern Indian state with a sizable Catholic population.
According to “Mathrubhumi,” a Malayalam daily newspaper, Anu Alex was found hanging from the ceiling fan in her room in the Sacred Heart convent in Kothamangalam, some 55 km northeast of Kochi, Kerala’s commercial capital.
The 21-year-old nun trainee had gone to room at 10:30 pm on April 1. When she did not join a special night prayer in the convent chapel, sisters went to her room and found her hanging. They rushed Alex to a nearby Dharmagiri Hospital where she was declared brought dead.
After completing the autopsy, the body was buried in the cemetery of St Augustine’s Church in Ramapuram, 35 km south of Kothamangalam, deepika.com reported.
The Kothamangalam police have registered a case and completed preliminary enquiry and inquest. They have found a suicide note that says nobody was responsible for her death.
Kerala has reported more than 20 mysterious deaths of nuns in the past few decades. On December 8, 2021, a group of Catholic women drawn from all over India called for a fact-finding team to study frequent cases of Catholic nuns dying by suicide in Indian convents.
The women, calling themselves as “concerned citizens” made the demand in a letter to Apostolic Carmel Sister Maria Nirmalini, the newly elected president of the Conference of Religious India (CRI), the national body of major superiors of sisters, brothers and religious priests in India.
What prompted the letter was the suicide of a 30-year-old nun November 30, 2021, in the chapel of her convent in the northern Indian state of Punjab. Sister Mary Mercy belonged to the Franciscan Immaculatine Sisters, an Italian congregation founded in 1881.
On April 16, 2021, the body of a 42-year-old Catholic nun was found in a well of a convent at Kureepuzha near Karunagappally town in Kollam district. Sister Mable Joseph was a member of the Pious Workers of St. Joseph, an Italian congregation that manages Maria Agnes English Medium School in Kureepuzha. A suicide note recovered from the nun’s room said that she was taking the drastic step as she is unable to bear the physical difficulties and the issues related to allergy.
On May 7, 2020, the body of Divya P. John, a 21-year-old novice of the Basilian Sisters in Thiruvalla, Kerala, was found in a well at the convent.