Kandhamal Archives

If Pope wants to honor martyrs, fast-track their sainthood causes
- Analysis
- April 23, 2017
Though anti-Christian persecution around the world is a widespread and growing problem, popes can’t just wave a magic wand and make police states, armed gangs and terrorists disappear. What they can do, however, is deploy their unique authority to fast-track sainthood causes for new martyrs, and Pope Francis has a looming chance to do just that when he visits India.
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New martyrs whose deaths meet the old test of ‘hatred of the faith’
- Global Church
- April 21, 2017
Pope Francis is set to visit Rome’s Church of St. Bartholomew on Saturday to shine a spotlight on the Church’s new martyrs. Yesterday, Crux presented a sampling of new martyrs killed ‘in odium amoris,’ or ‘hatred of love’; today, we look at several new martyrs whose deaths seem to meet the classic test of being killed ‘in odium fidei,’ or ‘hatred of the faith.’
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Where the Church absolutely incarnates the smallness of God
- Analysis
- December 25, 2016
A ferocious anti-Christian pogrom broke out in Kandhamal, India, in late 2007 and 2008. Riots led by radical Hindus left 100 people dead, thousands injured, 300 churches and 6,000 homes destroyed and 50,000 people displaced, many hiding in forests where more died of hunger and snakebites.
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New life stirs at site of 2008 anti-Christian massacres

A 2008 anti-Christian pogrom in Kandahamal in eastern India that ended with at least 100 people dead, hundreds injured and thousands homeless left deep wounds in the impoverished and illiterate rural communities it affected. Yet two recent vocations stories suggest that new Christian life is stirring, even where militant Hindu radicals tried to wipe it out eight years ago.

Will India get away with its anti-Christian crackdown?

“What we’re experiencing is an unprecedented, highly coordinated, deliberate and systematic attack intended to drive us out,” said the general counsel of Compassion International, a Christian charitable group that assists 145,000 children in India living in extreme poverty.

Baby born in jungle symbolizes suffering of India’s Christians

When a new director was recently appointed for a center serving the suffering people of India’s eastern Kandhamal district, the first thing he did was to visit a young girl born in the forests during a vicious cycle of anti-Christian persecution in the summer of 2008.