Nirendra Dev
New Delhi: In June, Sister Lucy Kalapura, one of the five nuns who stood to support the nun who accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal in a rape case, was permanently expelled from the Church.
Sister Lucy Kalapura, who was expelled from the Church after the Vatican turned down her appeal, claimed on Wednesday that she has no choice but to represent herself in court because no lawyer will take her case and the entire community has turned against her.
"There is no other choice because I had bitter experiences in the past two years," Sister Lucy told a leading TV channel.
"Why I am taking this decision is because no woman should be thrown into the street," she said.
"Many times I feel like giving up the fight because I am tired…. and I have come to know that I am becoming the enemy of the whole congregation," she said.
In June, Sister Lucy Kalapura, one of the five nuns who stood to support the nun who accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal in a rape case, was permanently expelled from the Church.
This move came after the Apostolica Signatura, the top judicial body in the Catholic Church, rejected her appeal against her congregation’s decision.
"I will stay here in the Convent," she had said in June, adding "I am going to, tell the truth to the world.
The Vatican did not even conduct a trial in my case."
Sister Lucy had earlier complained about Kerala police she could not even attend the holy mass in a nearby church because of the illegal confinement.
Bishop Franco Mulakkal served at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar since 2013 and has been the first bishop in Indian Catholic history to be arrested for being accused in a rape case.
Even on the global stage lately are instances that have left the Catholic leadership embarrassed.
"Departures from the Church are especially pronounced among the young but are not limited to them.
In places like Australia, France, Germany and increasingly in the United States, which for many years differed from other places, the Catholic Church is hemorrhaging members," writes Grimm William Grimm for Catholics-run UCA News.
Grimm is a native of New York City and is a priest since 1973 having served in Japan, Hong Kong, and Cambodia.
He also says a "big factor" in the decline of Catholic leadership's image has been the "exposure of the sexual abuse" of children by clergy.
"The strongest aftershock is the growing realization of how much the Church’s bishops and other managers covered up, enabled, perpetuated, and even perpetrated abuse not only of children but of other vulnerable people and women," his write up says.
