home

“I woke up at night and found my father on top of me. My mother was mentally ill. She would try to fight him, but she was always beaten by my father. I ran away to Delhi with a boy I loved, but my father came and found me. He took me by train to Mumbai and sold me in Kamathipura (one of the largest red-light districts in Asia), for Rs 10, 000,” cries Shwetha, aged sixteen. (All names in these true stories have been changed).

“I was sold into it at when I was around eight years old. I didn’t understand much. Nowadays kids understand more, but I wasn’t like that. There was a woman who offered me a few chocolates and I followed her here. She brought me here and then sold me. We came in through the front and she left from the back. And then they said to me, ‘We have bought you for Rs 50,000; so, you have to stay with us.’ They threatened me, so I had to stay there. I stayed because there was no way I could escape. The first two days I cried uncontrollably, but where could I go? I didn’t know a way out. I had no choice, but to stay”, cries another girl, aged fifteen, also forced to stay and “work” in a brothel.  

A Cruel Trade

“They would beat me with a belt and poke me with cigarette buds to drown my voice,” cries another girl who was forced into prostitution at the tender age of ten.

“I was fourteen when I was forced into prostitution. My body was used and degraded by men seeking sex with young girls in return for money,” cries another survivor of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Hiding behind the facade of being ‘clients’ or ‘customers,’ they raped me, sometimes more than thrice a day, for seven long years. They would specifically demand girls like me. ‘Young and fresh’, that’s how we were marketed.”

A Crime to be a Female?

Is it their mistake that they are born as girls? Is it a crime to be a female? Some victims are throwaways; others are sold by their parents or forced into prostitution. Still others are street children. Prostitution of children is illegal under international law, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 34, states, “the State shall protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse, including prostitution and involvement in pornography.” The convention was first held in 1989 and has been ratified by 193 countries.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. Article 20 concerning Protection of a child without family says, “The State is obliged to provide special protection for a child deprived of the family environment and to ensure that appropriate alternative family care or institutional placement is available in such cases”. When will this law become a reality?

Sr Lini Sheeja MSC

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Some years ago, while taking classes for us in Shillong, Fr Paul Puthenangady SDB told us that a parish should not be merely defined and demarcated by the number of Catholic families in it but by the number of poor people in it. Often, when we engage in the administration and pastoral care in a parish, we limit it to the number of Catholic families in the parish. In several places, especially in North India, we have large geographical areas under a parish but with very few Catholic families in it. But, if we think in a little more broadminded manner, we will realize how much more meaningful and fruitful our service will be.  It will be an authentic following of the example left behind by Jesus during his public ministry, when he reached out mostly to the poor and most marginalized people of his times, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity.

This new way of understanding a parish dawned on me as a big bolt from the blue, when I was assigned to a new mission some months ago to Don Bosco HRD Mission at Dhobasole, in one of the remotest areas in West Bengal. It is a mission among the Santhals in West Midnapore, bordering Bankura district, in the Jungle Mahal area, the original homeland of the Santhals. It is a mission pioneered by Fr Scaria Nedumattathil, who was also a pioneer in Prison Ministry, India. In the Dhobasole mission, there are no Catholics, but the mission is lively and vibrant like any other parish.

Fr Mathew George SDB

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Besides being the canonical heads, religious superiors are also the administrative heads of the religious communities and of their apostolic works. Therefore, the superior is appointed the Vice-President/Secretary of the Governing Board of legal institutions and as an authorized signatory to all the bank accounts of both the community as well as the works. By virtue of their appointment to various offices, supeiorrs have the faculty within their limits to exercise their authority for ordinary administration. However, for acts of extraordinary administration, they need the required canonical permission of the Provincial.

1. Superiors’ Role in Temporal Administration

At the local level, superiors have the responsibility to administer the goods. They administer the goods they are responsible for diligently and faithfully, in accordance with the laws of the Church and of the Religious Congregations they belong to. They exercise their administrative role in the following manner:

• They administer the goods of the works through the Heads of the institution and the Treasurer. Once a responsibility is delegated to a subordinate, superiors need to respect the principle of subsidiarity and allow them to function with the necessary freedom and support them in the decisions made. However, they coordinate and animate all the ministries of their communities.
• Through regular meetings with the heads of the institution, the superiors keep themselves informed and take a personal interest in what is happening.

Fr Alex G. SJ

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As I am always fascinated, energized, enlightened and motivated by the word love, I wish to share my encounter with love.

In 2002, I came across these beautiful lines from Khalil Gibran’s most celebrated book, The Prophet.”  I was moved to tears to know the way of love. Here is what Gibran says:

“When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you, yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you, believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you.

Even as he is for your growth, so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself
He threshes you to make your naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,

that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.”

Sr Nambikkai Kithari SAP

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When the editor of MAGNET suggested that one of us write about our vocation so that others may come to appreciate better our enclosed form of life, I was reluctant, thinking: We came here for a hidden life; then why to expose ourselves? Then a sentence from the Scripture came forcefully into my mind: “It is good to conceal the secret of a king, but acknowledge the work of God, and with fitting honour to acknowledge him….” (Tobit 12:6-7).

So here I am: Whenever I think of my personal vocation, I say with St. Paul, by the grace of God I am what I am. I always add, Yes, and because of the saintly parents the Lord has given me. I am the eighth child of my parents with seven brothers and four sisters. My parents were so devoted and religious minded that the very atmosphere we breathed at home was one of love and respect, charity and sharing, faith, prayer and pious practices. Each day began with the Angelus and a devotional Hymn and the day ended with the family gathered in the prayer room invoking the Holy Spirit, reciting the Rosary, Bible reading and the Devotion of the month. The first prayer we were taught was: “My Jesus, I love You, bless me and bring me to heaven.” I remember teaching this and other prayers to my younger siblings in the evenings. The truth that we are made for heaven was instilled into our mind and heart in our childhood.

Sr Mary Tancy of Jesus Crucified PCPA

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In the book of Numbers, God tells the Hebrews, “Should there be a prophet among you, in visions I will reveal myself to him, in dreams I will speak to him” (Numbers 12:6).

All of us dream. In our natural dreams there is often no logical order. They can be projections of our insecurities, fears, anxieties, subconscious expressions, etc. We are called to stand tall while everything around us seems to be collapsing, to be builders, to be capable of dreaming. In his homily to the youth for the Diocesan World Youth Day on 21^st November 2021, Pope Francis said,

“Let us not give up on great dreams. Let us not settle only for what is necessary. We are created to make God’s dreams come true in this world—when you are able to carry your dreams forward with courage, when you do not stop believing in the light even in the nights of life, when you commit yourselves with passion to make our world more beautiful and human. Thank you for cultivating the dream of fraternity, for caring for the wounds of creation, fighting for the dignity of the weakest and spreading the spirit of solidarity and sharing. And above all, thank you because in a world that, flattened by the gains of the present, tends to stifle the great ideals, you do not lose the ability to dream.”

Fr Leon Cruz SDB

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Because of a festival that comes right in the middle of the month of February, there are people who associate the entire month with romance, love, and friendship. So, this month, instead of looking at a single ‘candle,’ we will look at a couple of them. They are actually a married couple – both of whom are shining examples of committed, courageous service to people, especially the poor.

            The husband is someone whom the well-known English newspaper, The Guardian, in January, 2008, identified as one of the fifty environmentalists who could save our planet. Sanjit Bunker Roy, known simply as Bunker Roy, is a Bengali, who grew up in West Bengal. Born in a well-to-do family in West Bengal in 1945, he went to prestigious educational institutions. When his parents had great expectations for him, he went to Bihar to study the impact of one of the worst famines in India, called the Bihar famine. “I saw starvation, death, people dying of hunger, for the first time. It changed my life. I came back home, told my mother, ‘I’d like to live and work in a village.’” The shocked mother refused to talk to him for two years.

            Dedicating his life to the rural poor, Bunker Roy spent five years digging wells in villages in the district of Ajmar in Rajasthan. In 1971 he founded the only college in India that claims to be “built by the poor for the poor and managed by the poor.” The Barefoot College (TBC) in Tilonia, Rajasthan, admits illiterates and semi-illiterates from the most oppressed castes in remote Indian villages. It trains them to become water and solar engineers, architects, teachers, midwives, accountants, IT workers and marketing managers. TBC runs night schools for rural children who, during the day, have to work in their houses or fields.

Fr M A Joe Antony SJ

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The man prostrated himself in front of Sr Karuna. “If you had not caught my hand, I would have killed him. And I would have spent the rest of my life in jail. My children would have grown up without their father.”

This happened in a slum in Rourkela, Odisha, where Sr Karuna SSpS did wonderful work. Two men had fought. One of them took a knife and was going to stab the other man. Sr Karuna saw this, and stepped in courageously. She caught the man’s hand, and asked him not to stab the other man. She was able to prevent a death by stabbing. The furious attacker realized his mistake later, and came to thank Sister the next day.

Not everyone is lucky enough to be stopped from violent behaviour caused by anger. Some do not know what they are saying or doing when they are angry. They lose friends, get cut off from family members and neighbours—or commit despicable crimes.

Handling Emotions

We are human beings. We are neither angels, not mere animals. A part of being human is that we have feelings or emotions. We call some of them nice or positive—joy, compassion, liking, courage, etc. Others are called “negative,” because, left to themselves or expressed to excess, they do much harm. The chief negative emotions are: anger, fear, sadness and jealousy.

Making good decisions is an art we all need to master—a sure mark of maturity. It is not easy to develop sufficient wisdom for this. It takes guidance, reflection and much experience.

But if there one thing all of us need to learn when young is this: When NOT to take decisions.

Here is a one-line piece of advice:

DO NOT TAKE DECISIONS UNDER THE SWAY OF ANGER, FEAR, SADNESS OR JEALOUSY.

Such decisions are sure to be bad.

The angry man who was about to stab the other was acting like a mad man. He did not consequences or how serious the issue is, or whether there is a better way of handling the difference of opinion. Anger simply pushes him to lose control—and to grab the first weapon he finds, and kill the other.

Fr Joe Mannath SDB

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(Around November 2104, I asked to spend some months in our House of Prayer in Kalyani, W.B. The first part was one of my reflections during that time.)

Right on the eve of my departure to India, Elie, a friend of mine, brought me a small Japanese tea bowl. A few days earlier, she had mentioned it on the phone, and my first reaction (obviously not to her) was, “There’s no way I’m going to carry a ceramic teacup with me to India.” I’m one of those who travel light: one, because as a Missionaries of Charity Brother, I do not possess a whole lot of stuff (even though after ten years in Los Angeles I did manage to horde a lot of unnecessary things), and two, because of my philosophy—the more I pack, the more I have to carry.

Elie came over to my house to leave me the teacup. A sense of awe struck me when she started describing the process of how she moulded and finished this tea bowl and others using an old Japanese technique. According to Elie, the anagama kiln, also known as cave kiln (for its shape), is the type of oven which was used during firing. In contrast to modern kilns, which run on electricity or fuel, the anagama is fuelled only by firewood, which, when thrown in the hot kiln, is consumed very rapidly due to the high temperatures reached and needed—1400ºC. Firing can take from forty-eight hours to twelve days. In the case of this tea bowl, firing took three continuous days, and shifts had to be taken by individuals (friends of Elie) who share the same passion, in order to maintain the high temperatures for such a long time. During the process of firing, a natural ash glaze is formed on the clay pieces, due to the production of fly ash and volatile salts and minerals which settle on the pots. The natural ash glaze varies in colour, texture and thickness. It can be smooth and glossy to sharp and rough.

Bro Carmel Duca MC

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How should a provincial and the provincial councillors work together, according to Canon Law?

The practice in the Catholic Church has always been this: that no authority should make arbitrary decisions. The superior needs always to listen a ‘college,’ which may be named differently. Accordingly, Canon 627of CIC and Canon 422 of CCEO describes the requirement of superiors of religious Institutes to have a council. This law is made to protect the collegial nature of any religious institute (can. 115 §2 of CIC & can. 923).

Superiors are to have their own council, whose assistance they must use in carrying out their function (can. 627 of CIC; can. 422 of CCEO). CIC says that superiors need to have a council; it does not specify whether local superiors also need to have a council. However, CCEO vividly explains that the constitution should clarify whether in houses of less than six members a council shall be established or not (can. 422).

Both the Codes very clearly impose the existence of council to condition and collegially amplify the personal power of the superior and to be a guarantee of objectivity, impartiality, collaboration, and prudence in religious governance, especially in matters of special importance which affect the members or the institute. Therefore, the utilization of council members’ wisdom and knowledge is obligatory for the major superior. The obligatory nature of its function (Superior & Council) binds the major superior and affects the exercise of power.

Sr Navya Thattil OSF

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