Omen!

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Omen!

Sunday, 02 September 2018 | VR Jayaraj

Omen!

VR JAYARAJ brings you a report on the murky underbelly of the Kerala Church and how believers are finally protesting against the sexual and financial crimes committed by the men of God

It may look like a scene from a sub-standard adult movie filled with characters driven by lust and criminality. The Church would be the first to take to the streets with a crusade against moral degradation and slandering holy men demanding its ban if such a movie was ever made as it has happened in Kerala over three decades ago over playwright-director-actor PM Antony’s Malayalam play, Christuvinte Aaraam Thirumurivu (The Sixth Holy Wound of Christ) based distantly on Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel, The last Temptation.

She was just 17 when her neighbour Fr Abraham Varghese aka Sony, a priest of the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church to which she belongs, abused her sexually by promising to marry her. That was 19 years ago. He betrayed her and married another woman but continued to exploit her even after marriage by threatening to reveal to her husband what had happened between them when she was a minor.

Some years later, she revealed the  shameful trauma she had suffered to her parish priest Fr Job Mathew in a confession she made before him on the eve of her son’s baptism. Though a priest is supposed to take confessional secrets to his grave, Job exploited her sexually, threatening to disclose her secret to her spouse.

Unable to bear the torment, she described her painful experiences to another orthodox priest, Fr Johnson V Mathew, who was a friend from her college days. Instead of trying to console her and give her strength, he also made lustful advances by sending obscene messages and morphed pictures to her.

The woman later recounted all these experiences to Fr Jaise K George, belonging to the Delhi Diocese of the Orthodox Church, during her social media interactions with him and counseling sessions. The counselor did not counsel her but used her secrets to rape her at probably the costliest luxury hotel in Kochi. To complete the criminality of the act, he even made her pay the hefty hotel bill which eventually led to the disclosure of this unbelievable story of sex and sleaze in the Church.

“The rot of lust in the pulpit is not limited to the Orthodox Church. In fact, there used to be a general belief that priests of the Orthodox Church were immune to this tendency because they have the freedom to lead a marital life unlike the Catholic Church in which the clergy is sworn to celibacy. That myth was shattered with this,” says Augustine Chacko, an influential member of the Orthodox laity in Mannar, Alappuzha, district.

“I know of many such incidents but I chose to remain mum because I don’t want to bring harm to my Church,” he adds. Several other cases of suspected sexual abuse using confession secrets in the Orthodox Church have come up following the eruption of this scandal.

The situation of the Catholic Church in Kerala in this regard is even more agonising. When Sister Jesme, a nun who came out of the allegedly eerie life behind the iron curtain of secrets and pretended piety, told stories of persecution and exploitation in the Church through her autobiography Amen in 2009, even the most liberal in the Catholic Church were reluctant to believe her.

But many like Sr Angela (name changed on request) from an obscure village in Thrissur district, who had freed herself from a nun’s attire over two decades ago, vouch that Sr Jesme was telling the truth. “I am not a victim but the exploitation and oppression she speaks of in the book are real. The parents who have proudly and prayerfully offered their daughters to serve God as the betrothed of Jesus would shudder if they come across such stories. Still, nobody cares,” Angela, now a happy wife and mother, tells you. “If such things can happen to such a senior nun in the hands of the Bishop, you can imagine what is happening inside convents,” she speculates.

The Kerala Police may arrest Bishop Franco Mulakkal (54), head of the Jalandhar Diocese of the latin Catholic Church, anytime now for allegedly raping a senior nun, now 47, from the Missionaries of Jesus, which is under his command. He raped her 13 times in two years, starting 2014.

According to the nun, the Bishop had raped her using threats within the premises of her own convent, St Francis Mission Home, at Kuravilangad in Kerala’s Kottayam district. What is more startling about the nature, practice and conduct of the Catholic Church, whose faithful constitute 61 per cent of all Christians in Kerala (19 per cent of the State’s population), is that nobody in its hierarchy — including the office of the Pope himself — cares to address the grievances of a nun who has been brutally raped by a clergyman occupying the third highest position in the Catholic hierarchy.

The nun approached the police after year-long failed efforts to get justice from within the Church by petitioning every relevant authority in it – the local parish priest, the Bishop of the Pala Diocese under which Kuravilangad came, Major Archbishop Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, head of the mighty Syro-Malabar Catholic Church to which both belonged. He is presently serving the latin Catholic Church, the Vatican’s envoy in India and the Papal office in Rome itself.

“It does not surprise us because the Rome-based Catholic Church is a fortress when it comes to matters concerning the clergy,” a Thrissur-based senior priest on condition of anonymity said.

“I have been fighting against this secrecy and deniability for 10 years. All I earned with that fight is neglect. But what they fail to see is that the believers are not what they were once. A large section of the faithful has stopped being obedient lambs and has started questioning people whom I would like to call ‘religious bosses’. We have seen this in the case of the charge against the Father (Cardinal Alencherry) and now we are seeing it in the case of this bishop,” he said.

The brazenness of the Bishop in defending himself against the rape charge is so blatant that he is reported to have tried to force the victim and her relatives to drop the case against him by allegedly offering `5 crore. After that effort failed and the nun’s relatives approached the media with this disclosure, senior priest Fr James Aerthayil of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate (CMI) men’s congregation of the Syro-Malabar Church approached the victim and the nuns supporting her with threats and a tempting offer — 10 acres of land and a new convent in that for them in Kerala.

The victim’s supporter Sr Anupama to whom he had made the offer told him in no uncertain terms, “We are not moved by your offer or threats. We are not going to drop the case. We are determined to go ahead with it.” Fr Aerthayil told the police on Wednesday that he had tried to influence Sr Anupama on behalf of the Bishop who had contacted him through another acquaintance.

“People like us will not be satisfied with anything other than the Bishop’s arrest and legal procedures against him,” says Shaiju Joseph, leader of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocesan Movement for Transparency (AMT), constituted in the wake of the infamous scandal involving Cardinal George Alencherry in which he is accused of sanctioning unauthorised sale of Church-owned land worth several crores for a paltry sum with the help of a middleman whose credentials are suspect.

“In the first place, he is not fit to occupy the position of a Bishop. What he has been doing ever since the sex scandal broke out is to intimidate the victim through threats and offers in order to stifle her fighting spirit,” he said.

“In fact, the clergy is a frightened lot because believers have begun speaking out and demanding action against sex and money crimes as we have seen in the cases of the rape charge against Bishop Mulakkal and the financial swindling involving the Cardinal,” says Roy Augustine, a scholar of religious affairs.

Apart from AMT, there are also organisations like the Catholic Reformation Movement (CRM) that are in the forefront of a struggle against the injustices within the Church’s edifice. The CRM leader Indulekha Joseph, a leading Kerala High Court lawyer, has been campaigning for the way in which the sacrament of confession is being practiced in the Church.

According to Indulekha, male priests should not be hearing confessions of women in the context of widespread misuse of secrets revealed through it. She argues that women should be engaged for hearing confessions of women but the Church does not have women priests.

The Church has always enjoyed a prominent role in the socio-political affairs of Kerala with its history of missionary works in the fields of education and healthcare and they have allegedly earned more material benefits than they actually deserved through bargains in the State where vote-bank politics is a stark reality.

Even in the case of Bishop Mulakkal, there are allegations that his arrest is being delayed despite the investigating team’s determination because of political interference. “There are also indications of a positive change taking place in such matters. Believers are realising that bargainers and beneficiaries are being used as pawns for negotiations with politicians so that they can live in luxury doing whatever they want within and outside the Church.

That is, indeed, weakening their bargaining power. For example, when Fr Robin Vadakkumchery (47) — a highly influential Syro-Malabar Catholic Priest who had raped and impregnated a 16-year-old girl in his parish in Kottiyoor in Kannur, and eight others, including a senior priest and six Catholic nuns, were arrested in February-March last year, not a person came out on the street to protest. This suggests that the clergy cannot take the believers for granted and go around with their arbitrary, immoral and illegal activities,” says Augustine.

People close to the top clergy admit that the kind of reaction Kerala has seen from believers and those affected in the cases of the land scam involving the Cardinal and the sex scandal against Bishop Mulakkal was unimaginable a decade ago.

Believers came out on the streets openly seeking Papal and legal action against him in the land scam. In the Mulakkal rape case, the victim’s relatives, mostly those closely associated with the Church, and nuns supporting her showed the courage to approach the media with audio-clips containing recordings of phone conversations with the Cardinal, who had openly lied about the nun’s complaint against the Bishop and had refused to take up her grievances and threats and offers made by Fr Aerthayil to drop the legal battle.

“These are ominous signs as far as the arrogant Church leadership is concerned. Soon, the people will be questioning their right to roam around in their BMWs and Mercedez,” the Thrissur-based priest said.

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