By Matters India Reporter
Theni, April 3, 2024: A 35-year-old Catholic nun was found hanging in her room in a convent in Tamil Nadu’s Theni district.
Sister Janet Mary belonged to the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph of Trichy province and she lived with two other nuns in the convent that comes under the Archdiocese of Madurai.
The three nuns worked as teachers in a Theni school.
The funeral was conducted April 2 at the congregation’s headquarters in Chennai, the state capital which is more than 500 km northeast of Theni.
The nun apparently died on April 1.
The nun’s mobile phone and diary are apparently missing from her room.
Sister Mary is the second Catholic nun to die of suicide in Tamil Nadu. In 2022, a sister drowned in an open well at Eraiyur village in Kallakurichi district.
Sister Mary hailed from Veerasambanur village in Thiruvannamalai district, more than 300 km northeast of Theni. Her parents had died years ago and she is survived by a brother and two sisters. She had spoken to her brother at 8 pm the night before her death, but mentioned no problems.
When the nun’s body was brought to Chennai some activists protested before the congregation’s generalate at St. Thomas Mount. Sister M Arockiam, the superior general, has agreed to give compensation to Sister Mary’s family members.
The activists said they would form a factfinding team to find the reason for the nun’s death.
Felix, coordinator of Kristhava Makkal Kalam, a Dalit activist in Chennai, told a press conference that the congregation should cooperate with the investigation.
Sister Arockiam said they await the autopsy report.
An objective enquiry must be carried out. Congregations to have safeguarding policies, nor fir the sake of a policy.. surely to have healthy and formative communities where all feel included and accepted.
From the report I get a strong feeling that the congregation is not very serious about investigations. I think that CRWI must take up this case and proceed to investigate and initiate preventive measures among women religious.
As a layman I was appointed as the founder Secretary of the U.P. Regional Youth & Vocations Bureau in 1979. I got a ringside view of how skewered the entire system was, so evolved an alternate system too much to elaborate here.
Two immediate take aways. 1. Immediately stop these annual fishing trips, especially to poor villagers with big families 2. Admission to novitiates and seminaries should be only after completing graduation and attaining 21 years of age.
I have been repeatedly saying that there is an inordinate number of suicides among clergy, religious and seminarians. A thorough psychological and sociological study is required. Unfortunately today most congregations are desperate for vocations to man their multiple institutions, hence tend to compromise in their “recruitment ” methods.
Suicide takes place in all fields of life some time or other. In our Country does anybody know how many such cases take place in a day? At this time people are depressed for simple reasons, not able to cope with the stress and tensions of life etc. and some people don’t have the guts to share it with anyone and so on. Sisters, fathers,Bishops all are ordinary human beings like any of you. So there is no need to make so much noise.
Nuns need regular counseling, so that no more such case may happen in future they are human like us, they also can have family tention and stress. Let’s help them.
Shocked, better to be silent
Matter is private
Be silent? It’s a ridiculous suggestion. In the backdrop of repeated deaths in churches and convents, why should youths join religious vocation? So many young nuns have lost their lives in the convents and the parade is on the rise.
Very sad to hear the repeated hopless situations of religious life under the CBCI and CRI even after the celebration Easter celebrated a day before. “What are their focuses”??? is the fact finding team should evaluate. So that it may not repeat by the next member as well. Usually the perennial causes within the church structures are pushed under the carpets in guise of safegaurding the church. In fact church suffer in lack of truth. It is high time to ban CRI from indian Catholic Associations. If CRI is not able to address the basic disorders in their own communities what privilege are they deserve to decorate? In fact, CRI is a paralized body of CBCI and its power is structured under the inadequate leadership of certain men congregations and feminist activists of the women religious. CBCI is a most irresponsibly managed beurocracy. The so called apex body of indian church by unidentified anti Christ lobbies or gangs.
Basically they lack Holy, Spiritual, and virtuos life style in this structures under less trained and nontransferable uncommitted Bishops and Cardinals.
Repeated murder, duicide of priests and religious in India is a routine news now a days. Vatican need to watch over Indian bishops who torture missionaries by its own Bishops under the guise of virtues.