By Sujata Jena
New Delhi, January 7, 2023: The Catholic Church has postponed a function to celebrate the Vatican recognition of the Kandhamal martyrs after the civil administration denied security.
More than 10,000 people were expected to attend the January 9 function at Raikia to honor 35 Servants of God who were martyred for their faith during the 2008 anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal, a district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
The Vatican on October 2, 2023, gave the archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar a go-ahead to start the beatification process for the martyrs.
A message from Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli to Archbishop John Barwa of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar said the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints has granted “no objection” to initiate the process of beatification for the Servant of God Kanteeswar Digal and companions, “martyrs of Kandhamal.”
The archdiocese shared the letter with the media on October 15.
It says the nuncio is pleased to forward the letter from the dicastery to the archbishop.
The dicastery was responding to Archbishop Barwa’s May 31 letter requesting the Vatican to consider beatification for the 35.
The archdiocese has declined to talk about the denial of security.
Though unrelated, the denial came after the Orissa High Court on January 3 issued a notice to the state government on why a probe by a central agency should not be ordered into the murder of Swami Laxmananda Saraswati, a Hindu seer who had worked in Kandhamal.
The killing of the 82-year-old Hindu leader on August 23, 2008, by unidentified persons had triggered violence that lasted more than four months, killing more than 100 people, mostly Christians and rendered more than 56,000 people homeless. The Swami was reportedly a member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council).
A day after the High Court notice, the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist party that rules the federal coalition, demanded publication of the reports of two judicial commissions on Kandhamal violence and the seer’s murder.
The BJP said it has sought the probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation, but the state government had ignored it until now.
BJP’s Jayanarayan Mishra, leader of the Opposition in the Odisha Legislative Assembly, on January 3 said the government has published the reports of the commissions of Justice Basudev Pandigrahi and Justice A S Naidu, even 15 years after the seer’s murder.
He accused the state government of trying to protect the seer’s killers and its mastermind.
The seer’s killers and those who executed the plan are freely moving around and continuing their conversion activities in the Kandhamal district, he alleged.