Shame and scandal in the family

Shame and scandal in the family   http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090412/jsp/7days/story_10809903.jsp

The Catholic Church in Kerala is in the eye of a storm. Reena Martins looks at a spate of scandals and the revolt within

A video clip is doing the rounds of the voyeur’s world. This time, it’s not a schoolgirl who’s been caught in a sexual act. Instead, it’s a nun. Nuns and fathers in Kerala are in the news — and for all the wrong reasons. Last month, Sister Jesme, former principal of a reputed college in Trichur, rocked the state when she published a book that carried explicit anecdotes about priests molesting nuns. A nun in Anchal in Quilon has been pulled up for writing a diary that detailed sex scandals, including physical and sexual harassment, in her convent. In August last year, family members of Sister Anupa, a 22-year-old nun who hanged herself in a convent in Kerala’s Kollam district, accused her seniors of sexually harassing her and making her do hard physical work. “The time has come for nuns to be freed from the pitiable condition they are in,” says Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, Major Archbishop of the Syro Malabar church, in his biography Straight from the Heart. The book, written by Father Paul Thelakat, public relations officer of the church, hit bookstores in Kerala last week. Not everybody is worried. “Not every convent is a paradise. But these are incidents that can take place in any realm of society. With such a large number of nuns in the country — one lakh in 9,000 convents — incidents like these are bound to happen,” says Father Thelakat. “Nuns in Kerala are well respected and highly placed — many of them are teachers, nuns and doctors — and have also been responsible for the emancipation of women in Kerala.” Are these, as Father Thelakat says, only “stray incidences blown out of proportion?” Or is there a crisis brewing in the Church? “I would say to a great extent our nuns are not emancipated women,” says the 84-year-old cardinal in his book. “They are often kept under submission by the fear of revenge by priests.” Many believe that there have been too many incidents of the kind in recent years for them to be brushed aside as aberrations. “When nuns raise their voice, they invariably end up being put on psychiatric medication,” says Justice (retd) D. Sreedevi, chairperson of the Vanitha Commission, the state’s women’s commission which has over the last couple of years been seeing nuns seeking recourse to justice. She says the commission has been looking into 10 or 12 such cases. “I have myself investigated four such cases in the last year,” adds P.K. Sainava, a member of the commission. A nun in Kerala, Justice Sreedevi adds, had accused her convent of having forced her to swallow as many as 18 anti-depressants a day. The middle-aged nun from Anchal, who joined a convent when she was 15 and later revealed sexual scandals in her diary, was forced to undergo psychiatric treatment and confined to a mental asylum when her superiors came across her diary. The issue came to light several months ago when she got in touch with her nephew in Sweden who reported the matter to the state human rights commission and the Vanitha Commission. There was a time when such incidents were not as commonplace as they now seem to be in Kerala. The case that shook the state was that of Sister Abhaya. In March 1992, the young nun was struck on the head with an axe before being flung down a well, allegedly by two priests and a nun, whose sex romp she had interrupted in the kitchen of the St Pius X Convent in Kottayam. In June last year, the church blushed once again when a sex scandal of a 37-year-old nun and the driver of a hospital run by the Congregation of Mother of Carmel in Aluva, southern Kerala, was circulated over the mobile phone and internet. What is worrying is the fact that instead of taking remedial measures, the church looks the other way whenever there are warning signs of a scandal rearing its head. This happened in case of the errant nun in Aluva. “Our vicar had warned our mother superior about her ways and even asked her to transfer her to another parish. But the complaint and suggestion were ignored, as the nun was related to the superior,” says an insider. The scandal led to hushed whispers when late one night the nun fainted from heavy bleeding, suspected to have been caused by a miscarriage. But it was only when her lover began circulating images of their sex scenes he had recorded on his mobile phone that all hell broke. The driver was packed off to the Gulf, and the nun asked to leave the congregation and rehabilitated, with a hospital job in Delhi. In 2005, Mariam (not her name), a former nun of the St Teresa’s Convent in Konniyoor in Kerala’s Trichur district, was forced to leave the convent and quit her job as a teacher after she was impregnated and deserted by a Catholic priest. She had had a four-year-long affair with the priest — with the tacit approval of her superior and companions. Soon after that, Mariam wrote a 10-page letter to the Bishop of Nayyattinkara in Thiruvananthapuram district, asking him to intervene in her case and get her lover priest, the father of her newborn, to accept the child as his. “I have been used and cast aside and even my job has been taken away through the forced resignation drama. My parents have contacted you directly over the phone, appealing for help, but we are deeply disappointed as you have not responded,” she wrote. Many are surprised that such incidents are being allowed to go unchecked. But the church is powerful in Kerala, where, some estimate, 16 per cent of the people are Catholic. “Religious leaders are more powerful than politicians,” says a former priest who had taken on the church headlong a few years ago and has now given up the campaign. “Bishops are too busy discussing the latest luxury cars,” he says. But there is resistance, and it is coming from the church itself. Thirteen nuns of the Congregation of Mother of Carmel (CMC) mission in Narakkal, in Ernakulam district, have been battling the local parish clergy through their website — http://littleflowerconventnarakal. org. They accuse “certain persons” of plotting to snatch their school, Little Flower, and selling teaching posts in the school for a few lakhs rupees. “They wanted to make the school a milking cow,” reads the website. Their action has not gone unnoticed. Some of the nuns were attacked by hoodlums “lured by the parish priest,” says Sister Teena, a lawyer and member of the CMC. The nuns have all been transferred out — but they have defied the orders. “The authorities impose their will so much that they make you feel like a slave,” says another former member of a convent, Dr Sinta, who quit in 2005 after 33 years of being a Teresan Carmelite nun. For long stretches, the medical doctor says she was made to work in the kitchen or the garden as a punishment for “being forthright and questioning illegal practices like the sister superior functioning as a pharmacist in the congregation’s hospital, without being a registered pharmacist.” Taking on the Church leaves some deep scars on those who’ve dared. “The church is a formidable fortress; and whoever takes it on will be wounded,” says Sister Jesme, who now lives in a rented apartment in Calicut. While she has the support of a few friends, others hide behind the “iron curtain of obedience.” Her family, she adds, will take her home only if “I sit in a corner of the room reciting the rosary, in a white sari.” Dr Sinta’s story is similar. Her once insolvent brother whom she had bailed out by taking a three-year-long sabbatical from religious life is nowhere around these days. “But I trust the heavenly father to take me safely home,” says the gynaecologist, who works in a private hospital in Mallapuram in Calicut. She continues to wear the habit, a hallmark of religious life. “The habit is not patented by anybody,” she says. In Kerala, the Church, held in high esteem, is clearly going through turmoil. The former priest who had challenged the Church speaks for many when he says: “Nobody but God can remedy the situation.” Imaging credit: M. Iqbal Shaikh A file photo of a model has been used for illustrative purposes