Catholic leaders welcomed the prison sentences a court has given to five people convicted of taking part in the August 2008 anti-Christian violence in India's Orissa state. "It is a good development. It will go a long way in meting out justice to our people," Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar said on July 28, a day after the court announced its decision. The court sentenced Disara Kanhar, Durbasa Kanhar, Gupteswar Kanhar, Rabindra Kanhar and Naresh Kanhar to six years of "rigorous imprisonment" and also fined each person the equivalent of $105, special prosecutor Bijoy Krishna Pattnaik told reporters. Christians in the riot-torn villages in the Kandhamal district of Orissa continue to live in fear because many of the people who led the violence remain free, Archbishop Cheenath said. Divine Word Father Dominic Emmanuel, spokesman for the Delhi Archdiocese, said the court decision is "of course welcome, but the cases should be considered more seriously." Instigators of violence "should be punished severely so that it would be a lesson to themselves and others who spread sectarian hatred," the priest said.
Indian Catholics Welcome Sentences
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Around the affluent world, new hostility, resentment and anxiety has been directed at immigrant populations that are emerging as preferred scapegoats for all manner of political and socio-economic shortcomings.
“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”
Many have questioned how so many Latinos could support a candidate like DonaldTrump, who promised restrictive immigration policies. “And the answer is that, of course, Latinos are complicated people.”
Catholic voters were a crucial part of Donald J. Trump’s re-election as president. But did misogyny and a resistance to women in power cause Catholic voters to disregard the common good?