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The Excellency Shri K R Narayanan President of the Republic of India Rashtrapati Bhavan New Delhi 110 001
Mr President,
I hasten to inform you about a very serious and sacrilegious incident, which took place in Thane last Monday, August 6.
A group of some 25 persons, allegedly Bajrang Dal activists, after having assisted at a condolence meeting commemorating the second anniversary of the death of some RSS activists in Tripura, went to the Church of St John the Baptist in Thane at 8.15pm, broke down the strong iron gates of the parish compound, destroyed church property and brutally attacked the assistant priest, Fr Oscar Mendonca. They struck him on the head with a flower pot and beat him up very badly, giving him a black eye and causing large bruises all over his body. When some parishioners, who were participating in a prayer meeting in the church at the time, heard the shouts of the assailants and rushed to the scene of the incident, the intruders quickly disappeared. Fr Mendonca was taken to the Thane Civil Hospital where he received first-aid treatment. He was transferred to Holy Family Hospital in Bandra the next day.
The incident has deeply saddened the Christian community in Mumbai, which is receiving messages of sympathy, solidarity and best wishes from all over India and from abroad, even from persons of other faiths. This attack comes in the wake of the recent assault on a religious nun from Ujjain, Sr Leena, who is now lying in a critical condition in a hospital in Indore after being shot in the face by four miscreants. These incidents, coupled with the hundreds of barbaric acts (murders and rapes, extortions and destruction of property) perpetrated all over the country during the past three years against the peace-loving and law-abiding Christian community, are tearing apart the secular fabric of our beloved Motherland and are tarnishing India's international image of being a nation which treasures 'ahimsa'. I personally, who have returned home after having served in the foreign service of the Holy See for thirty-six years and have been the Holy Father's ambassador in various countries in Europe, Africa and the Far East for fifteen years, am ashamed to see India reduced to such a state of anarchy, thanks largely to the inaction or poor reaction of the Government and Police authorities concerned.
While condemning as senseless and barbaric the attacks on the innocent Christian community in general, and the one on Fr Mendonca in particular, which, besides having political and communal overtones, also entail the violation of human and religious rights and create law-and-order problems, I want to emphasise the serious spiritual disorder innate in such incidents, which are much more sacrilegious than any attack on a church, temple or mosque. They are premeditated and gratuitous assaults on holy persons who have received the sacred anointing and are consecrated in the service of God.
As far as Fr Mendonca's assault is concerned, I have ordered that prayers of expiation and atonement be offered all over this archdiocese. I myself will celebrate a Holy Mass of atonement in St John the Baptist Church, Thane, on Sunday, August 12, and shall thereafter perform a purification ceremony at the place where the sacrilege was committed. That evening, there will be a civic meeting of persons of various faiths, to consider the fallout of the savage behaviour of the aforementioned activists. Besides, all Catholic schools in the archdiocese will be closed in protest on Monday, August 13, after the students have participated in a prayer of atonement. On that day, Catholics and well-wishers will wear a black tag as a sign of prayerful protest for the shameful deed. I have also made a special appeal for prayers for the perpetrators of the criminal act, so that they may be touched by God's grace and be led to change their lives for the better. This would be our response to Jesus Christ's command to "pray for those who persecute you" and would echo His prayer on the cross: "Father, forgive them for they know not what they have done".
With cordial regards and the assurance of special prayers on the occasion of our forthcoming Independence Day, I remain,
Yours sincerely, Ivan Cardinal Dias Archbishop of Bombay
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