Sandesh Prabhudesai
3 October 2000
"Christianity is not a foreign religion. Indian Christians are as patriotic and loyal to their country as any other Indian", said Raul Gonsalves, Archbishop of Goa.
While decrying recent moves to tarnish the image of Indian Christians, he alleged : "there are attempts to not consider us as true Indians and to paint Christianity as an expression of colonialism and therefore a 'foreign' religion."
"Christ is a universal figure, not limited to any particular country", said Gonsalves while delivering a homily at Our Lady of the Rosary High School, Dona Paula, which celebrated the canonisation of the seven nuns of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. The school is one of the three institutions run by the Franciscan sisters in Goa.
The seven nuns, all of them European, were among the 120 whom Pope John Paul II canonised as saints this month. The Franciscan sisters were martyred in China on July 9, 1900 and had been beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1947. The Franciscan order, established in India in 1877 has 130 houses working across India mostly in rural areas. The order is spread in 76 countries world-wide.
Drawing parallels between the suppressive role of the Chinese government in the 1900s and the plight of Christians in India today, the Archbishop called on Catholics to work as the agents of transformation of society.
"Events today may demand that Catholics not remain only passive followers of Christ. The more loyal Catholics we are, the more loyal Indians we will become," he told a well attended congregation here.
Archbishop Gonsalves, who heads the influential Roman Catholic church here said the Pope's canonisation of the Franciscan sisters was in recognition of their loyalty to the church in the face of Chinese attempts to make the Church subservient to the
government in China.
Asked later by journalists what he felt about the delay in the canonisation of Indians beatified by the church, the Bishop said Catholics here needed to 'show deep faith and obtain a real miracle' from those they wanted to be elevated to sainthood.
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