Indian Catholic nuns protest against bishop accused of rape

Demonstrations fuelled by politician questioning account of Franco Mullackal’s alleged victim

Michael Safi in Delhi
Mon 10 Sep 2018 12.44 BST Last modified on Mon 10 Sep 2018 15.39 BST

Indian Catholic sisters have broken ranks with the church by openly protesting in the streets of the Keralan state capital against a bishop accused of raping a nun.

The demonstrations started on Saturday and continued throughout the weekend in Thiruvananthapuram, fuelled by an incendiary press conference in which a politician questioned the account of the bishops’s alleged victim, a 46-year-old nun, and described her as a prostitute.

The nun lodged a complaint against bishop Franco Mullackal on 27 June this year accusing the clergyman of sexually assaulting her over a period of two years starting in May 2014.

She made the complaint only after Mullackal went to the police claiming the alleged victim and five other nuns were harassing and blackmailing him. He denies the rape accusations and says the alleged victim has a vendetta against him.

The case has exposed deep ruptures inside Kerala’s Roman Catholic church, whose adherents numbered close to 1 million according to the most recent census in 2011. The southern state has one of the largest Christian populations in India and one of the oldest in the world.

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