VADODARA (UCAN): Police in Vadodara city, in Guhjarat state, India, launched an investigation into the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan orphanage, run by the Missionaries of Charity, on December 13 after a complaint was registered by a government official alleging violation of the state’s anti-conversion law.
Indian Church leaders suspect the probe may be intended to denigrate the globally renowned institution founded by St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata.
Jesuit Archbishop Stanislaus Fernandes, the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Baroda, called the police action “an attempt to denigrate our institutions as instruments of [religious] conversions.”
For years, local social welfare authorities praised the home as a model for the care and welfare of children and physically challenged people, he recalled.
The archbishop urged the faithful to pray for the nuns and his diocese.
Church leaders say the institution may have come under official scrutiny for the same reasons as so many others run by Christians across the country.
Draconian anti-conversion laws passed by the federal and provincial governments and majoritarian vigilante groups have been unleashed on minority communities ever since the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in India in 2014, they said.
The probe “is part of a well-orchestrated strategy to denigrate the name of St. Mother Teresa, an Indian icon for her dedicated service to humanity, especially the dying destitute, handicapped and orphaned who are ignored by society,” said Father Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit human rights activist based in Gujarat.
The Missionaries of Charity will fight the case legally in the hope that the truth will triumph.
Father Prakash said government authorities and right-wing groups targeting the congregation are well aware that most of the inmates are Hindus.
“Their strategy is to spread false information about the shelter homes or orphanages and create distrust and confusion among people, especially the secular Hindus who support the nuns’ good work,” he said.
In 2018, all childcare homes in India run by Missionaries of Charity were inspected by the federal Ministry of Women and Child Development following allegations of illegal adoptions.
A separate probe was also initiated into the foreign donations received by the congregation in Jharkhand state in 2019 after it was claimed nuns were diverting funds for unspecified objectives.
