ROME (CNS) — The religious nature of the Indian people, discrimination against Catholics, interreligious dialogue and evangelization were the main topics of discussion when two dozen Indian bishops sat down with Pope Benedict XVI in early September.
“It was a real heart-to-heart talk, and that is what it should be. It was a sharing between him and us,” said Archbishop Felix Machado of Vasai, who met the pope Sept. 2.
Making their “ad limina” visits to the Vatican to report on how things are going in their dioceses, the Indian bishops went to the pope’s summer villa at Castel Gandolfo, where they had a few minutes alone with the pope, then met with him in groups of six, seven or eight for a 20-minute discussion.
Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, said, “Naturally I invited the Holy Father to India. That was very important because all of us are waiting for his visit.”
The cardinal, who spoke to Catholic News Service Sept. 2 after concelebrating Mass with the other bishops at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, did not say how the pope responded to the invitation.
He said his group spoke to the pope “about the challenges the Indian church is facing. We are a small minority, but we have a great influence” in the fields of education, health care and community building.
“The Holy Father was particularly interested in our efforts at interreligious dialogue,” the cardinal said. While there have been acts of intimidation and violence against Christians in India, the church is building bridges with members of other religions and “collaborating together to build peace, to build a better India, to see how we could bring God back into society.”
While the people of India traditionally have been deeply religious, he said, especially in the lives of people living in urban areas “God is beginning to move from center stage, getting a little marginalized.”
But secularization is having less of an impact among Indian Catholics than Catholics in many other countries, he said.
The cardinal said told the pope “85 percent of our people go for Sunday Mass. He said, ‘Wow, that’s a dream.’ He was so happy to hear that.”
The cardinal, who served as vice chairman of the Vatican’s Vox Clara Committee for the new English translation of the Mass, said the Indian bishops are using the introduction of the new missal as an opportunity to educate the faithful, but also the priests, about the importance of liturgy.
He said he recently met with young people from the archdiocese, “and one of the questions they asked me was, ‘Cardinal, why are the homilies so boring?’”
The people “want to have a God experience when they come to Mass on Sundays or weekdays, and that’s up to us. We can do that,” he said.
Archbishop Machado, who used to work at the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, is chairman of the Indian bishops’ committee for dialogue with other religions.
He said that in his region of India, “the work of evangelization goes on. This particular region, it has virgin lands for proclamation of the word and conversions.”
“Jesus has been attracting so many people. People just come,” he said.
“We get people asking to convert in spite of very stringent laws that some states have made in India” regulating conversions, he said. But still, “I get 500-600 adults every year as new Christians, and this is what we were sharing with the Holy Father.”
“There is news around that in India the Christian churches are persecuted — a bit too exaggerated of a word for me — but all these problems don’t really discourage us,” he said. “Jesus never promised us a bed of roses. He already told us, he warned us what is in store for us if we really try to follow him and take up our cross.”
While there are some who want to make life difficult for Christians, many others treat Catholics, especially bishops, with great respect, he said.
“You know how many people come to just talk to me, to share with me, to listen to me, to fall at my feet asking me for my blessings, asking me to pray” for them, he asked.
“Most are non-Christians, most are Hindus, I must say. There is so much of this good news of dialogue,” he said.
In India religion “is a currency that has much value at present and the politicians know that” and try to manipulate it, he said. One of the biggest challenges for religious leaders is “how to keep religion free and out of the hands of vested interests of politicians.”