The Dalit Christian Liberation Movement (DCLM), an organisation working against the discrimination of Dalits within the Church, has strongly condemned the appointment of a non-Dalit as the new Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore.
Francis Kalist, the Bishop of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, was recently appointed by the Pope as the Archbishop of the two regions.
Though the newly-appointed Archbishop was born in Kanniyakumari district, Mary John, State president, DCLM, said that it was quite rare to move a Bishop serving in North India to here. He questioned whether such a decision was taken intentionally to prevent the appointment of a Dalit as Archbishop.
Highlighting the poor representation of Dalits in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in India, DCLM has been demanding the appointment of Dalits as Bishops and Archbishops. It has particularly demanded the appointment of a Dalit as the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore, a post that was lying vacant for around a year.
Mr. John said that even though three-fourth of the Catholic population in the archdiocese were Dalits, only non-Dalits were appointed as Archbishops since the appointment of first Indian for the post in 1955. He said that only one of the 17 dioceses in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry had a Dalit as the Bishop at present even though they accounted for roughly 75 % of the Catholic population.
Similarly, at the national level, he pointed out that though Dalits accounted for around 64% of the Catholic population, they did not account for even 10% of the total number of Bishops in the country.
DCLM met the Apostolic Nuncio to India Archbishop Leopoldo Girelli last month to highlight the issue.
In a statement issued following the meeting, the Apostolic Nunciature said that it did not discriminate in the selection of episcopal candidates and in the appointment of Bishops. “The responsibility of the Apolstolic Nuncio is to verify the priestly integrity of the candidates in order to establish their suitability for the office of the Bishop, making no distinction based on ethnicity, caste, language or social status,” the statement read.
The statement, however, added that the Nunciature fully supported and recommended the implementation of the Dalit policy brought out by that the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of India in 2016, which spoke about the discrimination faced by Dalits and measures needed to empower them.
