Kerala rape case: Nuns, priests frown on bishops' lament on values

Kochi: Nuns and priests have sharply reacted to the lament of the Kerala Catholic Bishop’s Council (KCBC), the apex body of the bishops in the state, on the loss of Christian values, saying the issue related to the alleged rape of the nun by a bishop would not have reached such scandalous proportions if only the Church had heeded the missionary nun’s plea for justice.     KCBC had on Sunday criticised nuns’ agitation against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, saying they had played into the hands of enemies of the Church and compromised on Christian values.

“This lament is shameful,” said Sr Lucy Kalappurakkal, who travelled from the distant Wayanad to Kochi to support the agitation by the nuns.  “Nuns were driven to the streets and forced to seek recourse through the law of the land because they had suffered in silence for long, hoping for deliverance within the cloister. And now when nemesis is catching up with the perpetrator, the KCBC says the nuns have violated the values of the church.” Sr Lucy belongs to the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC) in Mananthavady diocese.

She wondered whether the prelates expected the flock to meekly submit themselves to “lecherous superiors”. To the allegation that nuns teamed up with enemies of the church, Sr Lucy said the bishops should have reached the venue of the agitation the very first day, expressing solidarity with those seeking justice. “That would have been such a splendid comrades-in-arms spectacle,” she said. “We would all be blessed for that and the KCBC wouldn’t have raised the caveat of outsiders plotting to destabilise the Church.”

The charge of compromise on the three core values - chastity, poverty and obedience- should not have come from those who failed even to conduct a proper inquiry on the series of complaints submitted by the rape survivor. “They could have settled it within the Church. So who is to blame? Pity, they can’t read the writing on the wall,” the nun said.   She recalled that the rape survivor wrote to the apostolic nuncio in January this year after waiting in vain for the Missionaries of Jesus authorities to address her issue. “If protest amounts to violation of Christian values, then Jesus Christ was the first to violate such values,” said Fr Augustine Vattoly.