Report: Nuns in India have faced abuse for decades
January 02, 2019
A Catholic nun stands at the foyer of the St. Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad in the southern Indian state of Kerala. For decades, nuns in India have quietly endured sexual pressure from Catholic priests, an AP investigation has revealed.
(AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
James Kottoor, editor
CCV.
Note: The Associated
Press correspondent of the Jesuit Review
AMERICA has now found Sex abuse of Nuns in India as the
top news to be splashed for Global attention. Last January it was sex abuse in
Chile which finally led to
mass resignation of Bishops in that country. There was also a wide spread hue
and cry for mass resignation of bishops in US by faithful after many bishops
and priests were exposed for sex abuse.
Biggest
Hurdle in India
Ever since the Chile
mass resignation of bishops, this writer has been urging for the need of such a
cleansing in India by Pope Francis. The biggest hurdle here that blocks it is
the culture of silence among bishops, so hard and deep rooted like Ice on the
Hymalays that no Indian bishop will ever dare ‘betray’ their brother bishops on sexual failures.
One single example! We have
been high lighting Kadappa Bishiop, for and against, for last six months,
Married with wife and 20 year old son,
who has now come out of his clerical status.
Still no one talks about it in
public among bishops! Didn’t all Andhra bishops to CBCI president, know about
it? Weren’t all bishops united in their conspiracy
to cover it up? What more credibility
have they today than the Chile bishops? If so shouldn’t they all richly deserve
the rebuke of Mt. 23, and resign en mass as did all Chile bishops? ZERO
CREDIBILITY!
Only one
Bishop did Speak
Tim Sullivan, the writer of the
article below for America, interviewed
many people in India, mostly in Kerala, including
bishops. It is stricking to note that the only bishop who spoke up was Bishop
Bharnikulangra of Faridabad, Delhi. He was also
the solitary bisop who spoke out publically in support of Sisters conducting a two week Dharna in Kochi and apologized to the Sisters.
We eulogized him as
the “solitary boast” of nearly 200 Indian bishops. In
contrast several bishops in Kerala blamed the sisters sitting in Dharna
in the street, and bringing ill-repute for the Church in Kerala. Some bishops
even went to the extent of comparing Mulackal to Jesus Crucified, but has not
succeeded to fool the public. They all received bitter criticism in social
media from the public.
Who is a better
Christian: Kadappa bishop who resigned and admitted wrong doing in public or
other bishops who knew about it all along but covered themselves with criminal
silence, with the lame excuse: “To work is infra-dig for us; to beg
we are ashamed!” said in the heart of
their hearts, not publicly, in order to stick on like leaches to their Episcopal splendor?
Organized
Religions
Do we need further
proof why today’s young, energetic and enlightened generation rail against organized religions as in
Sabarimala; against caste-like graded
hierarchical structure in the Catholic Church; against the pursuit of better
and better honorific titles and appellations affixed for higher rungs in the
ladder; against better comfortable life style as one ascends hierarchical ladder;(?)
of course, with the solitary exception of Francis, who calls himself a ‘Sinner’,
not His holiness and places himself one step below the laity to deserve the
title ‘Servant of Servants’?
We have been hearing
the death-knell of “God” for long, already done for many. The logical next to
die would be or should be: ‘Organized religions!’ already in process, not religiosity
or spirituality; the third would be CHRIST SON OF GOD; what next, JESUS, as the ideal Son of Man? NO,
never, since Jesus called himself the Son of Man, or “THE EVERLASTING MAN” in the words of Chesterton,
and “MAN THE CROWN AND GLORY OF CREATION” in the words of Vivekananda!
Cattle Class
of Jesus?
Finally, what about the
length of life of the CATTLE CLASS, or the (Pusillus
Grex), the Little Flock? Being self emptied
like Jesus won’t they live for ever like Jesus? Having nothing to lose, they will never bend their knees to any insolent
might, but will rather die to serve like leaven in the dough and salt in the earth.
Theirs will be the
hidden, not ostentatious, and therefore paradoxical
work of perfecting a Humane Humanity of brothers and sisters, since among them the competition is for
taking the last place to serve till the
END of time or without END as the case may be! Nothing created is destroyed,
only perfected! So give your contribution however trifle, to this hidden or
open work of perfection, because, trifles make
perfection and perfection is no triffle!
Your contribution will always counted and remembered like the ‘widow’s mite’!
Read below Jesuit Weekly report on Sex abused Nuns in India
KURAVILANGAD, India (AP) — The stories spill out in
the sitting rooms of Catholic convents, where portraits of Jesus keep watch and
fans spin quietly overhead. They spill out in church meeting halls bathed in
fluorescent lights, and over cups of cheap instant coffee in convent kitchens.
Always, the stories come haltingly, quietly. Sometimes, the nuns speak at
little more than a whisper.
Across India, the nuns talk of priests who pushed into their bedrooms
and of priests who pressured them to turn close friendships into sex. They talk
about being groped and kissed, of hands pressed against them by men they were
raised to believe were representatives of Jesus Christ.
"He was drunk," said one nun, beginning her story. "You
don't know how to say no," said another.At its most grim, the nuns speak
of repeated rapes, and of a Catholic hierarchy that did little to protect them.
The Vatican has long been aware of nuns sexually abused by priests and
bishops in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa, but it has done very little
to stop it, The
Associated Press reported last year.
Now, the AP has investigated the situation in a single
country — India — and uncovered a decades-long history of nuns enduring sexual
abuse from within the church. Nuns described in detail the
sexual pressure they endured from priests, and nearly two dozen other people —
nuns, former nuns and priests, and others — said they had direct knowledge of
such incidents.
Still, the scale of the problem in India remains unclear, cloaked by a
powerful culture of silence. Many nuns believe abuse is
commonplace, insisting most sisters can at least tell of fending off a priest's
sexual advances. Some believe it is rare. Almost none, though, talk about it
readily, and most speak only on the condition they not be identified.
But this summer, one Indian nun forced the issue into the open. When
repeated complaints to church officials brought no response, the 44-year-old
nun filed a police complaint against the bishop who oversees her religious
order, accusing him of raping her 13 times over two years. Soon after, a group
of her fellow nuns launched a two-week public protest in India's Catholic
heartland, demanding the bishop's arrest.
It was an unprecedented action, dividing India's Catholic community.
Inside the accuser's convent in rural Kerala state, she and the nuns who support her are now pariahs, isolated from the
other sisters, many of whom insist the bishop is innocent. The protesting nuns
get hate mail and avoid going out.
"Some people are accusing us of working against the church, of
being against the church. They say, 'You are worshipping Satan,'" said one
supporter, Sister Josephine Villoonnickal. "But we need to stand up for
the truth."Villoonnickal has been a nun for 23 years, joining when she was
a teenager. She scoffs at the idea that she wants to harm the church.
"We want to die as sisters," she said.Some nuns' accounts date
back decades — like that of the sister, barely out of her teens, who was
teaching in a Catholic school in the early 1990s.It was exhausting work, and
she was looking forward to the chance to reflect on what had led her — happily
— to convent life.
"We have kind of a retreat before we renew our vows," she
said, sitting in the painfully neat sitting room of her big-city convent, where
doilies cover most every surface, chairs are lined up in rows and the blare of
horns drifts in through open windows. "We take one week off and we go for
prayers and silence."She had traveled to a New Delhi retreat center, a
collection of concrete buildings where she gathered with other young nuns. A
priest was there to lead the sisters in reflection.
The nun, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on condition
she not be identified, is a strong and forceful woman who has spent years
working with India's poor and dispossessed, from battered wives to evicted
families.But when she talks about the retreat her voice grows quiet, as if
she's afraid to be overheard in the empty room: "I felt this person, maybe
he had some thoughts, some attraction."
He was in his 60s. She was four decades younger.One night, the priest
went to a neighborhood party. He came back late, after 9:30 p.m., and knocked
at her room."'I need to meet you,'" he said when she cracked open the
door, insisting he wanted to discuss her spiritual life. She could smell the alcohol."You're not stable. I'm
not ready to meet you," she told him.
But the priest forced open the door. He tried to kiss her. He grabbed at
her body, groping wherever he could. Weeping, she pushed him back enough to
slam the door and lock it.
It wasn't rape. She knows it could have been so much worse. But decades
later she still reels at the memory, and this tough woman, for a few moments,
looks like a scared young girl: "It was such a terrifying
experience."Afterward she quietly told her mother superior, who allowed
her to avoid other meetings with the priest. She also wrote an anonymous letter
to church officials, which she thinks may have led to the priest being
re-assigned.
But nothing was said aloud. There were no public reprimands, no warnings
to the many nuns the priest would work with through his long career.She was too
afraid to challenge him openly."I couldn't imagine taking that stand. It
was too scary," she said. "For me it was risking my own
vocation."So the fierce nun remained silent.
Catholic history is filled with women who became martyrs to their own
purity: Saint Agatha had her breasts torn off for refusing to marry; Saint Lucy
was burned alive and stabbed in the throat for defending her virginity; Saint
Maria Goretti was 11 years old when she was killed by a man who tried to rape
her."It is a sin!" Maria is said to have cried out. "God does
not want it!"
But for a nun, fighting off a priest's advances means pinballing through
centuries-old sexual and clerical traditions. Celibacy is a cornerstone of
Catholic religious life, as is sexual purity among nuns. Many nuns say a sister
who admits to a sexual experience — even if it's forced — faces the risk of
isolation within her order, and possibly even expulsion.
"You're not sure if you'll be kept in your congregation, because so
much is about your vow of chastity," said Sister Shalini Mulackal, a New
Delhi-based theologian. "That fear is there for the young ones to disclose
what has happened to them."At the same time, priests are seen as living
representatives of Christ, with obedience to them another Catholic cornerstone.
Then there is the isolation of young women struggling to find their way
in new communities after leaving their homes.Caught at this intersection of
sexual taboo, Catholic hierarchy and loneliness, sisters can be left at the
mercy of predatory priests.
"There's a lot of emotion bottled up and when a little tenderness
is shown by somebody it can be so easy for you to cross boundaries," said
Sister Dorothy Fernandes, who has spent years working with the urban poor in
eastern India. "It can be hard to tell what is love and what is
exploitation."
It's particularly hard for sisters from Kerala, a deeply conservative
region long the birthplace of most Indian nuns. Sex is rarely mentioned openly
in small-town Kerala, boys and girls are largely kept apart, and a visible bra
strap can be a minor crisis for a young woman.
"Once you grow up, once you get your first menstruation, you are
not encouraged to speak normally to a boy. And the boys also vice-versa,"
said a nun from Kerala, a cheerful woman with sparkly glass earrings and an
easy smile. She remembers the misery of Sunday mass as an adolescent, when boys
would stand outside the church to watch girls filing in, eyes crawling over
their young figures. "We have a terrible taboo about sex."
That naivety, she said, can be costly.Like the time she was a novice
nun, still in her teens, and an older priest came to the Catholic center where
she worked. He was from Goa, a coastal region and former Portuguese colony.She
shook her head: "I was in charge of visitors, and we had this bad habit of
being hospitable." At one point, she
brought the priest's laundry to his small room, where he was sitting. As she
set down the clothes, he grabbed her and began to kiss her.At first,
she had no idea what was happening."The kissing
was all coming here," she said, gesturing at her chest.
The confusion of that day is still clear on her face: "I was young. He was from Goa. I
am from Kerala. In my mind I was trying to figure out: 'Is this the way that
Goans kiss?' She quickly understood what was happening but
couldn't escape his fierce grip. She also could not call out for help: "I
cannot shout! He's a priest.""I didn't want to offend him. I didn't
want to make him feel bad," she said. So she pushed herself away from him
until she could slip out the door.
She quietly told a senior nun to not send novices to the priest's room.
But, like the nun who fought the drunken priest, she made no official
complaint.A complaint against a priest means leveling an accusation against
someone higher in the church hierarchy. It can mean getting pulled into a
tangle of malicious rumors and church politics. It means risking your
reputation, and the reputation of your order.
In the church, even some of those who doubt there is widespread abuse of
nuns say the silence can be enveloping. Archbishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara, a New Delhi-based
church leader, calls incidents of abuse "kind of sporadic. Once here, once
there."But "many people don't want to talk," he continued.
"They may talk in the community, but they don't want to bring it to the
public, to the court."
Speaking up can also risk financial troubles, since many congregations
of nuns are financially subservient to priests and bishops.The silence is
magnified in India by demographics, religious politics and a deep-seated belief
that women have little value.
There are roughly 18 million Catholics in India, but
that's a small minority in this largely Hindu nation of 1.3 billion. Speaking
up could tarnish the image of their church, many nuns worry, and feed criticism
by Hindu hardliners. "Even we, as religious sisters, even we try to keep
it quiet," said Mulackal, the theologian. "A woman who goes through
this experience, she just wants to hide it and pretend everything is OK."
The rapes, the
nun says, happened in Room 20 of a small convent at the end of a one-lane road
in rural Kerala. Set amid rows of banana and rubber trees near the little town
of Kuravilangad, the sisters at the St. Francis
Mission Home spend their days in prayer or caring for the aged. In the garden,
a statue of the Virgin Mary overlooks a decorative fish pond the size of a
child's wading pool. The pond is covered in green scum.
The rapist, she says, was the most powerful man in
this tiny small world: Bishop Franco
Mulakkal.Smart and ambitious, Mulakkal had risen from small-town Kerala to
become a bishop in north India, overseeing a sprawling Catholic community.
He was also the official patron of her community of 81 sisters, the
Missionaries of Jesus, wielding immense influence over its budgets and job
assignments.
The nun is a friendly woman with jet black hair known for her quiet
confidence. Every few months, she says,
Mulakkal would visit the St. Francis convent and summon her. Then, according to
a letter she wrote to church officials, he raped her.The letter says the first rape happened on May 5, 2014.
The last time was Sept. 23, 2016. The dates are recorded in the convent's
visitor logs.
Mulakkal angrily denies the accusations, telling reporters the charges
were "baseless and concocted" and accusing the sister of trying to
blackmail him into giving her a better job."I am going through painful
agony," said Mulakkal, who was
jailed for three weeks and released on bail in October. "I tell
everyone to pray to God: Let the truth prevail."
Catholicism envelopes this part of Kerala. Towns are marked by their
cathedrals, convents and roadside shrines, where the Virgin watches passing
traffic or St. George slays the dragon. Businesses proclaim their owners'
faith: St. Mary's Furniture and Bed Center; Ave Maria Electronics; Jesus Oil
Industries.Around here, many see Mulakkal as a martyr.
A string of supporters visited him in jail, and crowds
greeted him when he returned home, a ring of policemen holding back people who
showered him with flower petals. "Hearty Welcome!" a
banner proclaimed.But at the St. Francis convent, one group of nuns watched
news reports about that welcome with dismay. While the sister leveling the
accusations against Mulakkal does not speak publicly, a half-dozen nuns cluster
around her, offering support and speaking on her behalf.
"Nobody
came to see sister, but so many people came to wait in line to meet Bishop
Franco in jail," said Villoonnickal, the nun, who moved back to Kerala to
support the woman she calls "our survivor sister."
That sister was the second of five children in a Kerala family. Her
father was in the army. Her mother died when she was in high school. Wracked
with grief, she was sent to stay with a cousin - a priest - living in north
India. Inspired by her time with him, she became a nun in 1994, working in her
early years as a teacher.
She knew Mulakkal, of course. Everyone in the Missionaries of Jesus
knows him. But the two were never close, the accuser's friends say, and had no
consensual sexual relationship.It was about fear.
"The bishop is such a powerful person and standing against him,
where will she go?" asked Villoonnickal. "If she went home what will
happen to her?" "Many times she was
telling him to stop. But each time he was forcing himself on her," she
continued.Eventually, they say, she told some sisters what was
happening. Then she says she repeatedly complained to church authorities. When
nothing happened, she went to the police.She also went to confession.
There, according to the other nuns, she was told she had to resist the
bishop."'Even if you have to die, don't submit yourself.'" the priest
told her in confession, according to Villoonnickal. "'Be courageous.'"
Catholic authorities have said little about the case, with India's Catholic
Bishops' Conference saying in an October statement that it has no jurisdiction
over individual bishops, and that the investigation and court case, which could
take many years, must run their course. "Silence should in
no way be construed as siding with either of the two parties," the group
said. "We request prayers for the Church at this difficult time."
In
Malayalam, the language of Kerala, sisters who leave the convent are sometimes
marked as "Madhilu Chadi" — Wall Jumpers. It's a mocking term for the
sexually frustrated and is often used for nuns and priests who have fled
religious life.
Those who stay get respect. They have communities that embrace them.
Their lives have direction, purpose. Those who leave often find themselves
adrift in India, searching for new identities and spurned by families and
friends. The events that knit families together — weddings, funerals, reunions
— are suddenly off-limits. The emotional toll can be immense.
Speaking up about the church's troubles, many nuns say, could end with
them forced from their convents, cut off in many ways from what they've always
known. "It's a fear of being isolated if I speak the truth," said the
nun who fought off the drunken priest. "If you do that, you have to go
against your own community, your own religious superiors."
The result is an engulfing silence. Silence is the armor that sisters use to protect
themselves and the lives they have created, even if it also
means struggling with their memories, and protecting the men who abused them.In
the end, most say nothing. "I didn't tell
anybody," said the nun who escaped the priest kissing her chest, and who
waited many years to talk about what had happened to her. "So you
understand how these things are covered up."
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