02-01-2009, 12:23 PM
Orissa archbishop Raphael Cheenath in US , to drum up western support
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/j...-india-exposed/
Stairway to Heaven COLUMN
Julia Duin
The popular film "Slumdog Millionaire" may be the public face of India these days but one Catholic archbishop now in Washington is trying to educate listeners about another India.
That's rural Orissa, India's least-developed, poorest state not far from Calcutta, the home of Mother Teresa. Last summer, a priest was tortured and a nun gang-raped in Kandhmal, a cauldron of radical Hinduism and the site of an anti-Christian pogrom in August.
The depressing details of it all have been previously described by this writer: 70,000 homeless Christians, more than 5,000 homes destroyed, 3,000 people missing and/or hiding in the nearby jungles for the past five months, 87 people burned or hacked to death and the infrastructure of the Catholic Church destroyed.
Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, 75, of Cuttack/Bhubaneswar and the spiritual head of five Catholic dioceses in Orissa, says
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/j...-india-exposed/
Stairway to Heaven COLUMN
Julia Duin
The popular film "Slumdog Millionaire" may be the public face of India these days but one Catholic archbishop now in Washington is trying to educate listeners about another India.
That's rural Orissa, India's least-developed, poorest state not far from Calcutta, the home of Mother Teresa. Last summer, a priest was tortured and a nun gang-raped in Kandhmal, a cauldron of radical Hinduism and the site of an anti-Christian pogrom in August.
The depressing details of it all have been previously described by this writer: 70,000 homeless Christians, more than 5,000 homes destroyed, 3,000 people missing and/or hiding in the nearby jungles for the past five months, 87 people burned or hacked to death and the infrastructure of the Catholic Church destroyed.
Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, 75, of Cuttack/Bhubaneswar and the spiritual head of five Catholic dioceses in Orissa, says