Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Bhubaneshwar (Agenzia Fides) - A parish has vanished into thin air. The story of Betticalla Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, the scene of anti-Christian massacres in August 2008, is a tragic story that the local Church recounted to Fides.
The parish covered the territory of the village of Nandigiri, where a hundred Christian families lived, alongside other Hindu families. These were poor farming families, very devoted and committed to the local Church, where there were two priests and three nuns residing in the parish.
One of the two priests, Fr Mrityunjaya Digal, is the current secretary of Archbishop Raphael Cheenath. His mother and his two brothers residing in the village have suffered and witnessed some of the most terrible episodes of violence recorded in the period of the massacres. The Hindu militants shaved the head of one of the two brothers and, exposing him to public ridicule, forced him to eat cow dung and drink its urine, acting out a ritual of forced conversion to Hinduism.
Each Christian house was raided and burned. The faithful took refuge in the forest and then found refuge in camps set up by the Government. However they are among the people who will never be able to return to their homes because the extremists still require the precondition of a mass conversion to Hinduism.
The authorities have announced “that they cannot do anything” in the face of threats by radical groups and cannot guarantee the security of Christians if they return to the area. The solution was, then, to found a new village, a great distance from Nandigiri on the slopes of the mountains. The village is called, paradoxically, “Shantinagar”, meaning “place of peace.”
And so local authorities have allocated a small piece of land to build a new home to each family. The Christian families (51 are Catholic) had much work to do. They tilled the land, built canals and paths to make the area habitable. However, to build each 80,000 rupees is needed, so fund-raising has started. Aid has also come from the Jesuits and the Sisters of Mother Teresa, who provided blankets, food and clothes.
But, despite all efforts, survival is very difficult and the sensation is that of living in a “ghetto”. There is no work in Shantinagar and there is no agricultural land. Most young people travel daily to the nearby town of Udayagiri, in search of day labour. “But people feel deprived of their dignity. And the Church in Orissa has lost a parish,” a source from the local Church tells Fides. Today the parish priest lives in distant Bhubaneswar, the state capital. Another priest will come to celebrate Mass on Sunday. The villagers will also endeavour to build a new church, with the help of the Congregation of St Gabriel, but it still awaits approval from the authorities for the building. Life in the new colony is very hard. The hidden desire of the faithful, entrusted to the intentions of Christmas, would be to return to Nandigiri. But it is highly likely to remain only a dream. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 10/12/2010)
