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People from all sections of Bangladeshi society should denounce the use of violence in the name of religion, said Bishop Sebastian Tudu of Dinajpur on Aug. 13.

Bishop Tudu when speaking at a seminar in northern Rangpur, Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country told that  Bangladesh is a multi-religious and multi-cultural nation, so all people need to stand guard against religious extremism and anarchy that threatens peace and harmony.

"No sane person or religion can support abuses and killings in the name of religion," he said.

"God calls on us to love each other, to do good to others and help people towards a righteous path in life," said Bishop Tudu who is the chairman of Bangladeshi Catholic bishops' Commission for Evangelization and Promotion of Pontifical Mission Societies.

"It's our responsibility to resist ideologies that cause harm to people and bring back misguided people from destructive paths," he said.

Bangladeshi police organized the seminar, which drew some 8,000 people including leaders from Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian communities. (UCAN)

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Bhubaneswar, India, Aug 16, 2016 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, who lived through one of the worst Christian persecutions in modern India and spent the remainder of his life fighting for justice for those who suffered in the Kandhamal massacre, died Sunday at the age of 81.

Archbishop Cheenath had been Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar from 1985 to 2011. He passed away Aug. 14 at Holy Spirit Hospital in Mumbai, after a battle with colon cancer.

His death followed the successful outcome of a legal battle he brought forward to gain an increase in relief to the victims of the 2008 attack against the Christian community in the Indian district of Kandhamal.

In 2008, Hindu extremists led anti-Christian attacks on nearly 200 villages in Kandhamal, part of the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar archdiocese. Around 30,000 people fled the East-Indian state of Odisha, and 6,000 homes were destroyed.

More than 100 people were killed, including a Catholic priest, and some 270 churches and chapels were desecrated in the attacks.

On Aug. 2 the Supreme Court of India upheld Archbishop Cheenath’s Public Interest Litigation for increased relief to the victims of the 2008 violence. The lawsuit was pursued after a Supreme Court ruling in Jan. 2009 had scaled back police protection and given no clear guidelines concerning compensation for victims.

John Dayal, a Catholic lay leader who worked closely with Archbishop Cheenath for more than 16 years, said in a Facebook post that the archbishop “provided leadership to a people who were shattered.”

In the years following the violent attacks and during the continued persecution of Christians by extremists, Archbishop Cheenath, along with other members of the Indian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, met with national political leaders on behalf of the victims.

Born Dec. 29, 1934 in Manalur, Archbishop Cheenath was ordained a priest of the Society of the Divine Word in 1963, and was appointed Bishop of Sambalpur in 1974. He remained there until his transfer to Bhubaneswar in 1985.

He retired at the age of 76 after shepherding the Catholics of Odisha for more than 25 years.

According to Matters India news, after his retirement the archbishop addressed some 3,000 people, praising the Christians of Kandhamal for their dedication to the faith despite living in a hostile environment.

“You have raised the faith into new heights at the face of death. I am proud of you,” he said.

In an article for the Herald of India, Dayal write that Archbishop Cheenath had “provided leadership to a battered and fragile community consisting of indigenous Tribal Kondh people and Dalit Panos groups…the poorest and the most marginalized segments of the population, to stand up to the worst form of persecution Christians have faced in over three hundred years.”

Archbishop Cheenath, he said, was “one of a kind, a hero of the faith for Christians.”

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By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- If there is one person who immersed herself in the "peripheries" Pope Francis is drawn to, it was Blessed Teresa of Kolkata.

If there was one who showed courage and creativity in bringing God's mercy to the world, like Pope Francis urges, it was the diminutive founder of the Missionaries of Charity.

For many people, the Catholic Church's Year of Mercy will reach its culmination when Pope Francis canonizes Mother Teresa Sept. 4, recognizing the holiness of charity, mercy and courage found in a package just 5-feet tall.

Ken Hackett, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, worked closely with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity in his previous positions at the U.S. bishops' Catholic Relief Services. He was at her funeral in 1997, her beatification in 2003 and will attend the Mass where she will be declared a saint.

"Where Mother pushed the Missionaries of Charity was to the edge, to the most difficult places," said the ambassador, who said he visited her houses "all the time, everywhere."

"They were always way out there, both geographically and with the people who absolutely fell through the cracks," he said. Mother Teresa opened homes in Ethiopia during the communist military dictatorship, in the most destitute neighborhoods of Haiti's capital, in Rwanda after the genocide and in Yemen, where four Missionaries of Charity were murdered in March.

"When there was war, when there was fighting, there they were," Hackett said. "They stayed."

Mother Teresa demonstrated that living a life committed to mercy took "selflessness and courage," he said.

Her courage also was demonstrated in her ability to "speak truth to power," he said. Mother Teresa visited the United States regularly, speaking to Catholic groups, opening homes and meeting with presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton. "She was straight out against abortion," the ambassador said. "From conception to death -- she was the whole thing and didn't pull any punches."

Like Pope Francis, he said, Mother Teresa drew energy from personal, one-on-one contact with people and consciously chose to live as simply as the poor she befriended and tended.

In life and after her death, Mother Teresa faced criticism for not using her fame and contacts to advocate more directly for social and political change to improve the lives of the poor she served.

"You can find all the things she wasn't," the ambassador said, "but what she was was much more important than what she wasn't. She was a model and now she will be a saint."

Valeria Martano, Asia coordinator for the Community of Sant'Egidio, said, "We are talking about a woman who broke out of the existing framework of what was expected of a Catholic woman in the 1940s. And, like Pope Francis, she chose to make her life a denunciation" of injustice. "Her witness was testimony that things can change. She did not speak of justice so much as do justice."

"Mother Teresa chose to understand the world through the eyes of the least of the least, what Pope Francis would call the periphery," said Martano, who also leads Sant'Egidio programs in the poorest neighborhoods on the southern edge of Rome.

But it is not just about "going out," Martano said. For both Pope Francis and Mother Teresa, she said, everything starts with prayer.

The founder of the Missionaries of Charity insisted that she and her sisters were "contemplatives in the midst of the world," she said. "It was not just about doing." Mother Teresa's prayer took her to the periphery and the peripheries were key to her prayer.

"What Mother Teresa lived, Pope Francis teaches constantly: compassion in the face of pain and never accepting indifference in the face of suffering," said Archbishop Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Italy.

For the archbishop, Mother Teresa modeled "a church close to the poor, a church that is mother to the poor and that lives the joy of serving the poor."

Revelations after her death that she suffered a "dark night of the soul," decades of feeling abandoned by God, are for Archbishop Zuppi a further sign of her deep immersion in the lives of the poor and forgotten.

"Her spiritual director would say that thirst is knowing there is water and longing for it," he said. "She was a woman who made the thirst of Christ on the cross her own. She lived that thirst."

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Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden

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