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Controlling the Church’s finances, a new form of persecution?

Several governments around the world, hostile to the Catholic Church, are trying to suppress its social works by attacking their finances. The process proves to be as discreet as it is effective.

The persecution of Christians around the world lacks media visibility. The massacres currently taking place in the Sahel against Christian populations, in particular, are rarely mentioned in the international media compared to other news. However, there is an even more insidious form of persecution of the Church which is practically invisible, that which hits it in the wallet, using laws decreed by hostile governments.

However, a striking example was given by the government of Narendra Modi in India. At the end of 2021, he “failed” to renew the license which allowed the Missionaries of Charity to receive foreign donations. This apparently insignificant action amounted to drying up a major project, on which depend schools, orphanages and hospitals which serve the most humble of Indian society. Faced with the outcry caused by this decision in India, the government finally granted the license it was holding after three months. But the Missionaries of Charity who reside in Nicaragua were not so lucky, they were deprived of funds, then completely expelled in June 2022.

Disturbing Christians?

These extreme decisions against charitable works seem mysterious, because obviously, the nuns do not represent a danger to civil peace. Father Balthasar Castelino, originally from the Indian state of Karnataka, explains: “Christians are disrupting the caste system by asserting that the life of an untouchable is worth as much as that of a Brahmin.” This system, 3,000 years old, divides society into higher and lower groups and remains very present in mentalities. Certainly, Hindu political leaders would not express it this way, explains the priest, but the Church dismantles the fundamental injustice on which Indian society is based. Priest of the Foreign Missions of Paris, he notes that the attitude of Hindu nationalists is found in many other places in the world.

The Church is attacked when it carries the message of the Gospel and highlights the contradictions of governments.

To return to the case of Nicaragua, it is the free speech of the clerics which hampers the authorities there. The local Conference of Bishops has never spared the regime in place and represents the strongest entity remaining in the country to dare to criticize the regime. Mgr Alvarez, bishop of Matagalpa, was sentenced to 26 years in prison before being extradited. In 2018, he took in protesters who had taken refuge in his church to escape police repression. His charity demonstrates the ambiguity of the regime, which presents itself as socialist and popular but is intractable towards its own people.

Haro on schools

In all these cases, the Church is attacked when it carries the message of the Gospel, and when it highlights the contradictions of governments. Nicaragua represents an extreme example of this attitude, because the regime can apply a very harsh policy there, without fear of opposition and provokes little international reaction. In many other countries, the oppression exercised against the activities of Christians engaged in their societies is more discreet.

Indonesia, which welcomed the Pope in September and gave the world the image of an open and tolerant country, for example has a darker side. We remember the inauguration of the “friendship tunnel” which provided access to Jakarta Cathedral from the Istiqlal Grand Mosque. But few media outlets noted that during this event, Papuan demonstrators were trying to draw attention to themselves. In their regions of West Papua, dominated by Indonesia, they are gradually dispossessed of their land. And Christian charities cannot set up any projects in this territory, because no funding can reach them. The government practices a double standard, allowing worship and displaying total tolerance, but actually limiting the actions of the Church within its territory. Because of this attitude, Catholic schools – in particular – are completely dried up and many of them cannot maintain their activity. It has happened that young Christian Papuans, deprived of school, have been placed in Islamic schools by the administration. Indeed, while Christian organizations are rendered incapable of acting, the administration creates golden bridges for Muslim organizations.

These constraints which weigh on the social works of the Church represent a violation of religious freedom. They oppose the well-being of populations subject to these governments. However, they are rarely mentioned because of their less frontal appearance, more insidious than more direct forms of oppression.

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