KOLKATA, India (UCAN) – Students, arming themselves with brooms, swept a busy street in Kolkata on Nov. 15 to highlight the need for civic consciousness.

Students clean a stretch of a central Kolkata street to mark Children’s Day

“We are responsible for the dirt and muck on the streets, so we need to take steps to keep the city clean,” said Tanay Saigal of St. Joseph’s College. Saigal was among some 160 young people from 20 educational institutions who cleaned a 200-meter stretch of Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road that day.

The Jesuit-initiated Leadership Training Service (LTS) organized the initiative to mark national Children’s Day.

Students across India usually observe Children’s Day on Nov. 14, the anniversary of the birth of Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, who loved children.

Jimmy Tangerine, a former LTS member who organized the event, said the group decided to hold the street clean-up a day late since most schools had their own programs on Nov. 14.

The LTS was introduced by the Jesuits of South Asia some 50 years ago to encourage leadership among students. The Kolkata-based service has thousands of members from various religions.

Father George Pattery and city councilor Sushmita Chatterjee clean Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road

Saigal, 16, said he found the cleanliness drive useful. “At least it made us aware of the conditions of our city’s roads. Often the dirt on the road does not bother us because we are so used to it,” he told UCA News.

Radhika Kishore Puria of Loreto College said the clean-up helped her empathize better with those forced to live on the streets. She said prior to participating in the program, she had simply overlooked the dirt and filth.

Her friend, Upasana Rohia, said she was encouraged to see many bystanders volunteering to help the students. “I was fascinated by the people’s positive response,” she added.

Launching the event, Sushmita Chatterjee, who represents the area in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, said the students have set an example for their elders whose lack of civic pride had spoilt the environment.

Chatterjee, a former teacher at Kolkata’s Don Bosco School, expressed regret at the lack of civic consciousness in the city and how people accept dirty streets as part of life. “We should be happy” if a few people “follow your example,” she told the students after symbolically sweeping part of the road with Calcutta Jesuit provincial Father George Pattery.

Tangerine, who owns a local shortwave radio station, said he hopes the “experimental drive” would become a movement with more schools joining in. The LTS has “great potential” to mobilize students, he said. His group plans to get more institutions to conduct similar initiatives regularly, he added.

The Advent season should bring feelings of joy and anticipation, but we often get bogged down with parties, plans, and presents. Unfortunately, feelings of stress are more common than feelings of wonderment.

To help you get back on track, our Days of Deepening Friendship blog along with some of Loyola Press’s most inspiring authors will be hosting an Online Advent Retreat. Starting November 30 and lasting until Christmas, we will be shifting our focus to preparing our hearts for the coming of the Christ Child. To participate in the Advent retreat, please subscribe to the blog.

Jesuit Father Frank Brennan has just returned from Lahore, where he found a country on edge and Christians with special cause for concern over the notorious blasphemy laws.

Father Frank Brennan

LAHORE, Pakistan (UCAN) — Last Sunday I attended a church service presided over by the Archbishop of Lahore, Lawrence Saldanha. There were armed guards at the entrance to the church plus nine plainclothes police placed in the congregation.

Pakistanis do not know whom to trust at this time.

Christians, who are less than 2 percent of the population, have cause to be on edge, for their fears are compounded by ongoing discrimination and a blasphemy law which has had catastrophic consequences.

With coups and increasing Muslim fundamentalism, Pakistan has strayed long past the declaration of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, its founding father. Jinnah proclaimed in 1947: “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”

The notorious blasphemy law in this Islamic state makes any derogatory remark about Prophet Muhammad, even indirectly or by innuendo, punishable by death.

This law has given license to Pakistanis seeking revenge against each other in the name of religion. On Sept. 16 a young Christian man arrested for blasphemy was killed in police custody. His family had to flee their home and the police claimed that he committed suicide in his cell.

In the run-up to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent charm-offensive in the country, the Pakistan Christian Action Forum, which represents all major Christian Churches in Pakistan, issued a statement calling for immediate repeal of the blasphemy law:

“Several incidents in the current year have perturbed the nation where the minority communities were victimized under the false accusation of having desecrated the Holy Qur’an. Such acts of violence have grown sharply under the pretext of the Blasphemy Law, which is blatantly abused to cause harassment and marginalization of religious minorities, especially the Christians.”

Gojra Christians outside homes destroyed in the August violence

Christians are still terrified by the events of August 2009, sparked by alleged sacrilege against the Qur’an by an illiterate Christian man in the village of Korian, in Punjab province. About 3,000 Muslims went on a rampage through the nearby township of Gojra. They destroyed the homes of 140 Christian families. Seven people were burned alive and another two died later.

Archbishop Saldanha told me: “The blasphemy law is the root cause of our problems. It is a law that can be misused at any time. If you are a ‘good Muslim,’ you cannot be seen to oppose this law.”

Anecdotally one hears stories of the blasphemy law being invoked in all manner of petty feuds and disagreements. Recently, a Christian who had upset a Muslim in a gambling game found himself subject to a blasphemy complaint.

A group called Minorities Concern of Pakistan have a newsletter which reported in September an interview with some of the Gojra Christians.

One man told them: “They killed us because we are Christians and we are poor. They were calling us dogs and American agents.”

Most Pakistanis, meanwhile, are very wary about the United States, and not just because US administrations have chopped and changed allegiances to militant groups in Pakistan. Muslim Pakistanis especially are very mistrustful of those who sponsored the Iraq War and who committed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

If things start to improve in Pakistan, greater cooperation between the United States, the civilian government and the Pakistani military may ensure that the Taliban militants and Al Qaeda are more contained. But military hardware alone is not going to be the answer.

While some of the best schools in the country have been told they are on hit lists, and ordinary schools have to close periodically and then expend precious resources on armed guards and security devices, there was a report during the week of Hillary Clinton’s visit that enrollment in madrassah, Islamic boarding schools, had increased by 40 percent in the last academic year.

Madrassah graduates do not tend to have much sympathy for those campaigning against blasphemy laws. They know nothing of Jinnah’s original vision for Pakistan.

This past weekend the Jesuit school in Lahore celebrated its silver jubilee.

Inside the school walls, and under the watchful eye of the armed guard and security personnel, Christian and Muslim children learn and play together, daily espousing the school motto, “Unity and Integrity.”

Ordinary Pakistanis are crying out for both. But whom do you trust once you walk outside the school gate?

Jesuit Father Frank Brennan is a professor at the Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic University. This is an abridged version of an article that original appeared on the website Eureka Street.

St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ranchi

RANCHI, India (UCAN) — Tribal Christians, including Protestants, credit a Catholic cathedral for fostering their faith for a century in the eastern Chotanagpur region.

Even Hindus respect St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ranchi, says Father Lucas Tirkey, the cathedral’s former parish priest. Many come to pray in the church regularly, while others stand outside, or on the road, joining their hands and bowing their heads, he added.

Various Church figures shared their views on the cathedral in the wake of its centennial celebrations held last month.

The cathedral “has become a shrine for the tribal church,” said Cardinal Telesphore Placidus Toppo of Ranchi, who celebrated the special jubilee Mass on Oct. 4.

The Church in the region, which comprises largely tribal people, has grown “enormously” and 11 dioceses in the region now trace their roots to the cathedral, Cardinal Toppo told UCA News.

Tribal Catholics from Chotanagpur now play “a key role in the Church in India,” he said. Cardinal Toppo, Asia’s first tribal cardinal, said the Chotanagpur Church had produced thousands of priests and nuns who now work in various parts of the world.

Jesuit missioners from Belgium built the cathedral in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand state, as the region’s first Catholic church. It was consecrated in 1909. Cultural programs were also held to mark the occasion.

Tribal people perform a traditional dance at the start of the special jubilee Mass

Bishop Nelson Lakra, the chief executive of the Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church, also paid tribute to the cathedral’s position in the community.

“St. Mary’s Cathedral is not simply a structure of bricks and sand but a milestone of Christian faith journey,” he told UCA News, adding that it “is a door of salvation for many.”

Auxiliary Bishop Binay Kandulna of Ranchi says the cathedral has become “the symbol of our faith, evangelization and identity of the Catholic Church in the region.” The church has played “a very important role” not only in the local Catholics’ spiritual growth but also in the socioeconomic and intellectual advancement of the region, he said.

The cathedral holds the remains of Belgian Father Constant Lievens (1856-1893), a Jesuit missioner whom the tribal Church reveres as the “apostle of Chotanagpur.”

Father Lievens worked more than seven years in Chotanagpur and left India for his homeland in 1893. When he left, the region had 36,000 Catholics. During his stay in India he visited hundreds of villages around Ranchi and evangelized thousands of tribal people.

The first Christian group to arrive in the region, however, were Lutheran missioners in the 1840s. The region now has 10 major Christian denominations with more than 1.2 million Catholics and 300,000 Protestants.

By AMY SULLIVAN / DETROIT

The University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy is the last Catholic college-prep school left in the city.

Corine Vermeulen for TIME

Today approximately one-quarter of the school’s 780 students are city residents, with the rest spread across the inner and outer suburbs. The school allocated $1.4 million in financial aid this year to students who could not afford the $9,990 tuition. “We will not turn away any student who is qualified to come here,” says U of D principal Gary Marando.

Jesuits tend to roll their eyes at portrayals of their order’s missionary zeal. (Jeremy Irons’ action Jesuit in The Mission, says Father Patrick Peppard, one of the school’s theology teachers, was “a bit romanticized.”) Still, by any measure, U of D’s service to the city of Detroit since the Jesuits decided to remain has been remarkable. During a period in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the school’s president, Father Malcolm Carron, was even made a Detroit police commissioner.
(See pictures of the remains of Detroit.)

U of D’s continued presence in Detroit offers inner-city boys a way out. But it also gives affluent suburban students a way into a city that has long been neglected by its neighbors. For them, an education at U of D doesn’t involve just driving across city lines to attend classes. Seniors are required to spend every Wednesday morning on a service project in the city. And students in all grades (7 through 12) volunteer their time for no credit. Last year they spent more than 3,500 hours in activities from tutoring public-school kids to delivering food to disabled residents. “We made a commitment to stay in the city,” says Holly Bennetts, the school’s full-time service director. “We have a responsibility to make it better.”
(See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

Students are told hundreds of times during their education at U of D that they are training to become community leaders, what the Jesuits call “men for others.” The phrase comes up in nearly every conversation with current and former students. “It’s kinda corny,” says Keith Ellison, class of 1981 and a Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, “but that motto really made me think about service. And it set a course for what I’m doing with my life now.”

The Jesuit ideal can also be found in more recent graduates like Will Ahee and Tom Howe. Both grew up in tony communities – Grosse Pointe and Birmingham – that may be geographically close to Detroit but are worlds away culturally. Through U of D, they volunteered with Earthworks, an urban garden project that is reclaiming for sustainable agriculture some of the thousands of acres of abandoned lots in Detroit. When they graduated a few years ago, Ahee and Howe could have had their pick of universities. They chose to stay in Detroit and attend Wayne State University, where they study comprehensive food systems. How do these college kids spend their weekends? Working in a community garden they started near Elmwood Park, nine miles from U of D.

See pictures of John 3:16 in pop culture.

Jesuit provincials and regional superiors at the Hindu shrine in Belur

KOLKATA, India (UCAN) — Senior Jesuit leaders from South Asia who prayed inside a shrine dedicated to a Hindu ascetic say the visit and prayers have “enriched” them.About 20 provincials and regional superiors of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia spent 15 minutes at the shrine in Belur on Oct. 29, during an event designed to foster interreligious relations.

The Religious conference comprises provincials and regional superiors from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The shrine, which sits on the banks of the Ganges, north of Kolkata, is dedicated to Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a 19th century Indian mystic, who claimed to have had visions of Jesus Christ. Swami Vivekananda, the mystic’s most famous disciple, founded the shrine in 1886.

Calcutta Jesuit provincial Father George Pattery, who organized the visit, said the monks at Ramkrishna Mission, who manage the shrine, promote interfaith dialogue. The Jesuit priest has close ties with the monks.

Father Anthony da Silva, provincial of Goa, told UCA News the visit was “an enriching experience” and added the shrine’s mystical atmosphere “greatly impressed” him.

Jesuit leaders meet Sister Mary Prema, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity

Gujarat provincial superior Father Keith Abranches commented that the visit was “inspiring and enriching. It was another way of God-realization.”Dipankar Basu, a Hindu teacher at Kolkata’s Jesuit-managed St Xavier’s School, guided the group during their visit.

He said it was remarkable to see Catholic priests praying in their own way in a Hindu shrine. An event like this “is sure to have greater effects in creating goodwill, and help people of all faiths to have a change in attitude toward other religions,” Basu told UCA News.

Swami Shantanu Maharaj, from the Sri Ramkrishna Mission headquarters, said Swami Vivekananda founded his religious order on Christmas night in 1886, after he and his friends spent an evening meditating on Christ.

He said Sri Ramkrishna had a vision of Jesus, after which he could not think of anything else for three days. Two of his disciples, Swami Brahmananda and Swami Shivananda, too had a vision of Jesus on Christmas eve 1903 at the Belur shrine.

Earlier in the day, the Jesuit superiors celebrated Mass at the tomb of Blessed Teresa in Kolkata and met Missionaries of Charity superior general, Sister Mary Prema.

The Jesuit provincial and regional superiors are attending their twice-a-year meeting at Konchowki, south of Kolkata.

Download pdf 

Uta Sievers

Some impressions from Father General’s talk to the Social Apostolate Coordinators

The core of Father General’s talk to the coordinators this year was the question “Is the Society of Jesus moving away from the poor?” This had come up as an observation during our discussions and was a source of concern for our group.

Father General pointed out how a circle of invisibility has led to fewer and fewer young Jesuits wanting to live and work with and among the poor. The starting point is that there are now fewer Jesuits in all apostolates, not just in the social apostolate. This overall scarcity is one reason why Insertion Communities, which represent the closest way of “being with” the poor and marginalised and are often small, are sometimes the first ones to be closed when a province decides to consolidate its communities; and the closure of an Insertion Community means a story that will go untold to the next generation of Jesuits1. At the same time, there are fewer Jesuits who volunteer to live in Insertion Communities and provincials are aware that they cannot force people into this ‘difficult’ way of living. Why do the provincials perceive it as difficult? A possible reason is that however great the initial motivation based on the Gospel message to be with the poor, there is also a wish not to disturb other processes such as formation and university studies. Secondly (and this is the main reason for the small number of new faces in Insertion Communities), as we ourselves grow older in the social apostolate, we have lost contact with the Scholastics while focussing on the poor. Not all is lost, however. In places where the social apostolate has made visible a way to live as religious among the poor, where we have kept in touch with the Scholasticates, young Jesuits have in fact opted for this way of life.

Father General then shared some ideas with us as to what we, as persons active in the social apostolate, can do. One of his main concerns is the need to guard ourselves against the virus of success; working with the poor will never be ‘a success’ or make us successful in a secular sense. We need to discard the idea of success in our thinking, our mentality, our values – this is true for the whole Society of Jesus, but especially for the social apostolate. According to Father Nicolás’ vision of the Society, it is important to live in simplicity with the people whatever our field, pastoral or academic, or any other. This broad experience of commitment will inspire young people more than all-exclusive social justice work, which may send out the message that when you work with the poor, you cannot serve in any other way. In the same vein, he also warns against an “all or nothing” mentality in the social apostolate, since a purist’s vision of social justice will produce admirers but not followers. Instead, we need to plan this form of work with care; we need to plan our free time, our study, and our service in an interrelated and meaningful way. And last but not least, if we manage to make friends among the poor, we will never feel we are “moving away” even if we change assignments.

Father Nicolás also raised the issue of the way in which we deal with our institutions, especially those that have a long Jesuit tradition. He was quite clear in his analysis that attachment was one of the weakest points of our traditional ministries. We become attached to our ‘creations’ and are very reluctant to let go of the good works we are running. In the process, we are literally killing Jesuits, overloading them with up to five different jobs, infecting them with the virus of success. Mobility is essential to our charism; thus we need to learn a new way of discernment, to let go and move on. For example, when starting a school, we should immediately prepare our lay successors so that we can hand the work over to them after no more than 15 to 30 years. He also stressed the fact that the shrinking number of Jesuits is being compensated for by the growing number of competent lay people who wish to work in our institutions. This gives us the freedom to dream again, to be creative, flexible and mobile. He encouraged us to see our institutions as our children: let them go off, get married and go their own ways.

1For the stories of active insertion communities, see Promotio Iustitiae 100: http://www.sjweb.info/sjs/pj/.

By AMY SULLIVAN / DETROIT

The University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy is the last Catholic college-prep school left in the city.

Corine Vermeulen for TIME

Today approximately one-quarter of the school’s 780 students are city residents, with the rest spread across the inner and outer suburbs. The school allocated $1.4 million in financial aid this year to students who could not afford the $9,990 tuition. “We will not turn away any student who is qualified to come here,” says U of D principal Gary Marando.

Jesuits tend to roll their eyes at portrayals of their order’s missionary zeal. (Jeremy Irons’ action Jesuit in The Mission, says Father Patrick Peppard, one of the school’s theology teachers, was “a bit romanticized.”) Still, by any measure, U of D’s service to the city of Detroit since the Jesuits decided to remain has been remarkable. During a period in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the school’s president, Father Malcolm Carron, was even made a Detroit police commissioner.
(See pictures of the remains of Detroit.)

U of D’s continued presence in Detroit offers inner-city boys a way out. But it also gives affluent suburban students a way into a city that has long been neglected by its neighbors. For them, an education at U of D doesn’t involve just driving across city lines to attend classes. Seniors are required to spend every Wednesday morning on a service project in the city. And students in all grades (7 through 12) volunteer their time for no credit. Last year they spent more than 3,500 hours in activities from tutoring public-school kids to delivering food to disabled residents. “We made a commitment to stay in the city,” says Holly Bennetts, the school’s full-time service director. “We have a responsibility to make it better.”
(See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

Students are told hundreds of times during their education at U of D that they are training to become community leaders, what the Jesuits call “men for others.” The phrase comes up in nearly every conversation with current and former students. “It’s kinda corny,” says Keith Ellison, class of 1981 and a Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, “but that motto really made me think about service. And it set a course for what I’m doing with my life now.”

The Jesuit ideal can also be found in more recent graduates like Will Ahee and Tom Howe. Both grew up in tony communities – Grosse Pointe and Birmingham – that may be geographically close to Detroit but are worlds away culturally. Through U of D, they volunteered with Earthworks, an urban garden project that is reclaiming for sustainable agriculture some of the thousands of acres of abandoned lots in Detroit. When they graduated a few years ago, Ahee and Howe could have had their pick of universities. They chose to stay in Detroit and attend Wayne State University, where they study comprehensive food systems. How do these college kids spend their weekends? Working in a community garden they started near Elmwood Park, nine miles from U of D.

See pictures of John 3:16 in pop culture.

Jesuit provincials and regional superiors at the Hindu shrine in Belur

KOLKATA, India (UCAN) — Senior Jesuit leaders from South Asia who prayed inside a shrine dedicated to a Hindu ascetic say the visit and prayers have “enriched” them.About 20 provincials and regional superiors of the Jesuit Conference of South Asia spent 15 minutes at the shrine in Belur on Oct. 29, during an event designed to foster interreligious relations.

The Religious conference comprises provincials and regional superiors from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The shrine, which sits on the banks of the Ganges, north of Kolkata, is dedicated to Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a 19th century Indian mystic, who claimed to have had visions of Jesus Christ. Swami Vivekananda, the mystic’s most famous disciple, founded the shrine in 1886.

Calcutta Jesuit provincial Father George Pattery, who organized the visit, said the monks at Ramkrishna Mission, who manage the shrine, promote interfaith dialogue. The Jesuit priest has close ties with the monks.

Father Anthony da Silva, provincial of Goa, told UCA News the visit was “an enriching experience” and added the shrine’s mystical atmosphere “greatly impressed” him.

Jesuit leaders meet Sister Mary Prema, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity

Gujarat provincial superior Father Keith Abranches commented that the visit was “inspiring and enriching. It was another way of God-realization.”Dipankar Basu, a Hindu teacher at Kolkata’s Jesuit-managed St Xavier’s School, guided the group during their visit.

He said it was remarkable to see Catholic priests praying in their own way in a Hindu shrine. An event like this “is sure to have greater effects in creating goodwill, and help people of all faiths to have a change in attitude toward other religions,” Basu told UCA News.

Swami Shantanu Maharaj, from the Sri Ramkrishna Mission headquarters, said Swami Vivekananda founded his religious order on Christmas night in 1886, after he and his friends spent an evening meditating on Christ.

He said Sri Ramkrishna had a vision of Jesus, after which he could not think of anything else for three days. Two of his disciples, Swami Brahmananda and Swami Shivananda, too had a vision of Jesus on Christmas eve 1903 at the Belur shrine.

Earlier in the day, the Jesuit superiors celebrated Mass at the tomb of Blessed Teresa in Kolkata and met Missionaries of Charity superior general, Sister Mary Prema.

The Jesuit provincial and regional superiors are attending their twice-a-year meeting at Konchowki, south of Kolkata.