Word: kerala
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After 26 years as a nun, Jesme Raphael gave up her robes and walked out of the Congregation of the Mother of Carmel, the Catholic order in Kerala, India, that had been her home for three decades. Two years later, Raphael, now 53, has come out with her memoirs, Amen: An Autobiography of a Nun, cataloging lurid details of bullying, sexual abuse and homosexuality in the oldest Catholic women's order in the idyllic coastal state in southern India. Shocking as it is, the book is only the latest in a long series of accusations and scandals afflicting the Catholic...
...Since the book's release on Jan. 30, publishers DC Books have already sold all 3,000 copies, and a reprint has been ordered. The Catholic Church is miffed. "There is no dearth of antireligion people in Kerala society," said Stephen Alathara, deputy secretary of the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council. "They are using this for their antisocial, antichurch activities." In 1957 Kerala voted in the world's first democratically elected communist government, and it has been under communist rule since the last state elections...
...There has been no shortage of them in recent months. On Feb. 11, Sister Josephine, a nun in the Daughters of Mary congregation in Trivandrum, Kerala's state capital, was found dead in her room in an apparent suicide. Members of the congregation said the 38-year-old nun had been under treatment for depression. After news of the incident spread, a crowd gathered around the house and shouted slogans alleging that harassment had led Sister Josephine to kill herself. The police had to intervene, and an inquiry into the case was later ordered. Six months earlier...
...Recently, there have been expulsions and other disciplinary action in response to other cases of misconduct within the church in Kerala. In June last year, a nun in a Christian hospital was expelled after a video of her having sex with a driver was circulated over mobile phones and the Internet. In October, Pope Benedict XVI suspended a bishop in the coastal city of Cochin after his adoption of a 26-year-old woman as his daughter raised questions. The bishop has denied any wrongdoing and said he adopted the woman out of fatherly love. But the church took...
...Such problems have been there in almost all convents [in Kerala]," says Joseph Pulikunnel, a veteran Syrian Catholic social reformer who edits Osanna, a magazine aimed at Kerala's Catholic community. "The convents are closed to the public. We don't know what is happening inside." He says India's Catholic Church, which accounts for 70% of all denominations among India's 25 million Christians, owns vast properties across the country, including over 30,000 educational institutions and 6,000 hospitals. In Kerala, the Church runs 60% of the private educational institutes. The state's near 100% literacy - a singular...