India: Mother Teresa's sisters face delayed approval of foreign funding

St Mother Teresa - Image MoC

The Indian government has announced that it has not renewed the licence allowing the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) to receive funding from overseas. According to a statement released by the Indian Union Home Ministry on Monday, the MoC does not meet conditions under local laws.

The statement said the reason was "not meeting the eligibility conditions" under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) after "adverse inputs were noticed", without giving further details. As of Monday, the Ministry of Home Affairs states that no "revision application has been received from Missionaries of Charity for review refusal of renewal".

In the meantime, the existing registration remains in place until 31 December 2021.

Mamata Banerjee, an opposition leader and vocal critic of the Modi government sparked outrage when she tweeted that the government had frozen the bank accounts of the charity - a move which would leave their 22,000 patients and employees without food and medicines. Several other news services picked up this story.

The MoC in Calcutta clarified matters in a statement saying that the government had not frozen its accounts but adding that its FCRA renewal application had not been approved. "Therefore … we have asked our centres not to operate any of the (foreign contribution) accounts until the matter is resolved."

This information was confirmed by a subsequent statement released the same day by Sr M Prema, Superior General of the MoC based in Rome.

Earlier this month, the MoC came under investigation in President Modi's home state of Gujarat following complaints that girls in its shelters were forced to read the Bible and recite Christian prayers. The charity denied the allegations.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, right-wing Hindu groups have consolidated their position across states and launched many hate attacks on religious minorities, saying their action is to prevent religious conversions.

A Catholic school in central India's Madhya Pradesh state was vandalized by a 500-strong mob on 6 December. ( See: ICN 7 December 2021 I ndia: Catholic school attacked by Hindu mob - www.indcatholicnews.com/news/43619 )

Reporting from New Delhi, Al Jazeera's Pavni Mittal said Christmas celebrations were disrupted during the weekend and last week, including the vandalising of a life-size statue of Jesus Christ at Ambala in Haryana, a northern state governed by Modi's Hindu nationalist BJP.

"This past Christmas, a statue of Jesus Christ was vandalised in northern India and in other parts of the country too. Churches reported Hindu mobs entering and disrupting their services," she said as she covered a protest against religious attacks in the capital.

Elias Vaz, national vice president of the All India Catholic Union, condemned the latest incidents. "The strength of India is in its diversity and the people who have done this at Christmas are the real anti-nationals," Vaz said.

Christians represent only 2.3 percent of India's 1.37 billion people, while Hindus are the overwhelming majority.

Founded by Nobel Peace Laureate, Mother Teresa of Calcutta (now St Teresa of Calcutta) in 1950 in Calcutta, India - the Missionaries of Charity run 244 hospices, community kitchens, schools, leper colonies and homes for abandoned children in India. Worldwide they have 760 centres in 133 countries, served by 5,167 members.

LINK

Missionaries of Charity official website - www.missionariesofcharity.org