By Thomas Scaria
Mangaluru, Jan 22, 2025: A Capuchin seminarian, who was arrested six weeks ago in a sex scandal, has been cleared of the allegation after a DNA test, his provincial says.
The police in Eluru, Telangana, have arrested another man in connection with the case of impregnating a trainee nun, Father Mariadas Prathipatti told Matters India January 22.
The case came to light on December 8, 2024, when a man in Eluru, a town in the southern Indian state of Telangana, alerted the police saying that he had seen someone throwing a body from a Catholic hostel near his house.
The police and the Women Development and Child Welfare Department officials in the state recovered the blood-stained body of an infant outside St Joseph Convent Hostel, managed by the Religious Teachers of St. Lucy Filippini, a 332-year-old Italian congregation.
The police took into custody the trainee nun who first named the Capuchin deacon as the father of the baby. The police then arrested the deacon who was preparing for his priestly ordination after completing his theology studies.
Father Prathipatti said the deacon was cleared of the allegations after undergoing the DNA test that proved that he was not the father of the deceased infant.
Upon investigation, the police recovered a mobile from the trainee that showed she had made more than 60 calls to another person in Eluru, said to be her boyfriend.
The provincial, who is based at Vijayawada, a town in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh state, said the police cleared the seminarian of the charges after the test, but he remains in the jail as the woman insisted that he had fathered her baby.
The provincial suspected a plot by her family to frame the seminarian.
According to him, the woman and the seminarian are related and the family wanted them to get married to escape the shame.
The family does not want her to marry the baby’s actual father because of caste reasons.
Currently all the three are in police custody, the provincial added.
The woman is accused of killing her newborn.
Asked about the congregation’s stand on the deacon, the provincial said the matter was referred to their general curia which is expected to take an “appropriate decision if the deacon is acquitted of all allegations.”
“Currently, our doors are open and if he is innocent, we may accept him back,” Father Prathipatti said.
Meanwhile, Capuchin Father Chinu Polisetti, the director of the Vijnananilayam, Institute of Philosophy and Theology in Eluru where the deacon studied, said his institute currently has students from 24 congregations, including nuns. “We have not faced such an allegation until now,” he said.
Earlier, the Diocese of Eluru had conducted an enquiry into the sex scandal but closed it after the police finding.
Meanwhile, Capuchin Father Suresh Mathew, former editor of the Indian Currents weekly and the secretary of the Indian Catholic Press Association, said sex abuse cases are exceptional in the Catholic Church and they need not be seen as recurring events.
“Instead of blaming those who err, it is better we sit together and develop strategies to ensure such things don’t repeat,” Father Mathew told Matters India.