Opinion | Articles | M L Satyan | 04-Feb-2025
I was deeply disturbed when I watched a video in WhatsApp sent to me by a Professor in Kerala. A Plus One student in a government higher secondary school at Anakkara in Palakkad, Kerala, issued a death threat to a teacher. The student's anger was sparked .....
Opinion | Articles | Chhotebhai | 29-Jan-2025
Ecumenism is non-negotiable When we say that something is non-negotiable, we mean that it cannot be compromised or watered down. Its message and mission must be forthright, sincere and enduring. Ecumenism, commonly understood as Christian Unity, comes .....
Opinion | Articles | James Pochury | 20-Jan-2025
As excavators churn up the sacred soil of our ancestral lands, the stakes grow clearer: this is not just about losing territory but about the erasure of identity, culture, and faith. In the Northeast of India, where the earth carries the stories of our an.....
Opinion | Articles | Cedric Prakash | 19-Jan-2025
It is late evening, the day after Uttarayan (15 January), traditionally called ‘vasi uttarayan’. It has been a dull, cloudy day; the wind has been fairly good though. Since yesterday thousands have been on building –tops, flying their kites and many other.....
Opinion | Articles | M L Satyan | 17-Jan-2025
Today two industrialists have become the talk among the social media, both in India and in abroad. One person is Mr. N.R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys and the other person is Mr. S.N. Subrahmanyan of Larsen & Toubro (L&T). Months after Infosys co-founder N.....
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 08-Jan-2025
India’s bishops, as much as its civil society, possibly missed an ominous warning in a report in the Kathmandu-based portal Himal Southasian about the growing support within tribal communities in the northeastern states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh for .....
Opinion | Articles | M L Satyan | 05-Jan-2025
I had an opportunity to work with Functional Vocational Training and Research Society (FVTRS) from 2008 to 2014. The focus group of FVTRS was always school dropout students. Local NGOs became partners of FVTRS to provide skill training to school dropout s.....
Opinion | Articles | James Pochury | 02-Jan-2025
For five decades, Fr. Niphot Thianwihan of Chiang Mai, Thailand, has walked side by side with the Indigenous Karen people, learning and living their profound wisdom. His journey resonates deeply with the realities of the tribes and Indigenous peoples of N.....
Opinion | Articles | Peter F Borges | 22-Dec-2024
What does Christmas mean to you? Is it the sparkle of lights that adorn every street, the joyful hum of carols in the air, or the warm aroma of freshly baked cakes and sweets wafting through your home? Is it the excitement of unwrapping presents, the laug.....
Opinion | Articles | M L Satyan | 16-Dec-2024
Four months ago, I conducted a few sessions during a retreat held at Christeen Retreat Centre, Kottayam, Kerala. The participants consisted of a bishop, priests, nuns and lay Catholics. The topic that I dealt was: Cross, Death and Resurrection. I presente.....
Opinion | Articles | James Pochury | 14-Dec-2024
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." (Martin Luther King Jr.) When the youth of ICYM Northeast recently walked the hallowed grounds of Old Goa, touching the sacred relics of St. Francis Xavier and .....
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal | 07-Dec-2024
The prophetic Monsignor, Benny D’Aguiar, wrote in The Examiner, India’s oldest newspaper which he edited, of Pope Paul VI’s visit to Mumbai in 1964 to attend the International Eucharistic Congress: “There has never been anything like it within living memo.....
Opinion | Articles | Chhotebhai | 07-Dec-2024
Where was the Holy Family when Herod ordered the killing of the children in Bethlehem? As we approach Christmas, this question began to haunt me. It forced me to look deeply into the infancy narratives in both Mathew’s and Luke’s gospels. As a layman with.....
Opinion | Poem | Anthony Dias | 25-Nov-2024
Politicians of all ilk on the prowl, find always a way To weaken, even subvert, democracy’s sway When they smell defeat due to anti-incumbency The poor women voters they begin to fancy! If ‘poverty is the biggest environment polluter’ It also is m.....
One is not sure how many people in the world would have known or heard about a country by the name of Cabo Verde prior to the commencement of the FIFA World Cup 2026. But beginning with the night the former Portuguese colony created history by holding Spa.....
In May 2026, a popular priest, Fr. Bomax Pereira, suffered a cardiac arrest, and he was treated at the Goa Medical College. He was in the intensive care unit for a few days before he finally gave in and left while still in the ICU. Fr. Bolmax was one prie.....
The most notable bright spot of the 2026 assembly elections is clearly the manner in which voters in Kerala exercised their franchise; Not because they voted any particular party to power, but because they avoided voting along communal lines. The victorie.....
In March, a Los Angeles court hearing a petition filed by a 20-year-old woman, Kaley, who was a minor at the time of filing the case, held Meta and Google guilty of coming up with attention-grabbing applications, resulting in minor addiction to YouTube an.....
In a country where cricket is not just a game but considered next only to religion, a spectacle unfolded on March 1 inside the mammoth and iconic Eden Gardens cricket stadium in Kolkata, where the Indian and West Indies teams played the last of the Super.....
When Himanta Biswa Sarma exited his parent party, the Indian National Congress, in 2015 and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, not too many eyebrows were raised since such leapfrogging from one political party to the other was nothing new in Indian politi.....
A German Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, was against the Communist ideology and also against Semitism. His distaste for them made him a natural ally and supporter of Rudolf Hitler. When Hitler ultimately assumed power and insisted on the supremacy of t.....
India is fortunate to have given birth to three outstanding sons, Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, and Mahatma Gandhi, who inspired generations not only in India but across the world. Apart from their liberal thinking, their thoughts on religious f.....
On the intervening night of November 2nd and 3rd, the Indian women’s cricket team created history by winning the ICC Women’s World Cup for the first time at the DY Patil stadium in Navi Mumbai. They defeated South Africa, a team dubbed by many cricketing.....
Many ordinary people who are not connected to music and art might not have even heard of Zubeen Garg, despite being an iconic artist and a person who cared for others. However, after his unfortunate and untimely demise on September 19, 2025, social media.....
During the monsoon session of the Parliament in July 2025, Union Minister of State for Education Sukanta Majumdar informed the house that student suicide cases accounted for 7.6 per cent of all suicide cases reported across India in 2022, showing a slight.....
The dictionary meaning of ‘persecution’ reads as ‘unfair or cruel treatment based on race, religion, or political belief’. Therefore, persecution can occur through racial discrimination or political exploitation and is not necessarily limited to the relig.....
Opinion | Articles | Chhotebhai
Fortunately I belong to a small parish where just a handful of people come for the Sunday evening Mass. It is therefore a time of quiet reflection for me. These reflections then are based on the first two readings of the first Sunday of Lent. The first.....
Opinion | Articles | Cedric Prakash
February will always be a painful month for some particularly the Jafri family: on 28 February 2002, Ehsan Jafri, a former Member of Parliament and an authentic and much-loved citizen of secular India was murdered; on 1 February 2025, his wife Zakiaben wa.....
Opinion | Articles | M L Satyan
The arrest of News Click founder and editor Prabir Purkayastha, the human resources chief Amit Chakravarty and a few other journalists associated with News Click on October 04, 2023 has sent a shock wave throughout the country. Amid growing restrictions o.....
Opinion | Articles | Cedric Prakash
Few will not remember Judas Iscariot and the role he played in the betrayal of Jesus! For those who don’t know or don’t remember, these passages from Sacred Scripture will help put things in perspective: And while they were eating, he said, “Truly I .....
Opinion | Articles | John S. Shilshi
It was on the 15th of January 2022 that I began to feel unusually uneasy. There was an indescribable discomfort all over my body, which was triggered by a combination of dullness, weakness and absence of appetite or thirst. Just the thought of eating or d.....
Opinion | Articles | John Dayal
India and Pakistan, two nations scarred by Partition, five wars including one this year, seem to have yet again used a cricket field in distant Dubai as a surrogate for the battlefield. India won the two matches the cricket teams played, but it was the u.....
Current Updates | NE Brief | NECARF Rep
On October 18, 2021, the Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Conrad Sangma, called on Most Rev. John Thomas Kattrukudiyil, Bishop of Itanagr, at the Bishop’s house in Papunallah. Besides the Bishop, the CM was warmly received by Taw Tebin, president of APCA, Nab.....
Opinion | Articles | Capt. Eddie Viegas
One day a little Black Lad was watching a balloon vendor. The little boy saw that the vendor had balloons of all colours. As each balloon was filled with gas, the balloons would rise high into the air. There were balloons of white, green, blue, red, yello.....
Opinion | Articles | Chhotebhai
The Blame Game Continues A highly respected and erudite clergyman from Kerala sends me his articles. Of late he has made three claims: 1. The Jews killed Jesus 2. Priests have always manipulated people to commit violent acts, justified in the nam.....
Current Updates | NE Brief | NECARF Rep
The Diocese of Darjeeling bid a tearful farewell to Rev. Fr. Leonard Tamsang, who breathed his last on the morning of October 29, 2020 at Gianora Home, 8th Mile, Kalimpong, where he was residing along with fellow retired Priests. Born on August 8, 1942 in.....
Opinion | Articles | Isaac Harold Gomes
Since my last report of 10th November on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), an unprecedented reverse migration into Bangladesh has begun through Hakimpur, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India-Bangladesh check-post. On 23.11.2025 Anandabazar.com rep.....
Poem | NECARF Rep | 17-Jul-2026
New Delhi, 16 July 2026 (CCBI): Pope Leo XIV has appointed Bishop Albert Hemrom (57), Bishop of Dibrugarh, as the Coadjutor Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Guwahati, Assam. The appointment was made public on Thursday, 16 July 2026......
Poem | Editorial team | 09-Apr-2026
Arunachal Pradesh, located in the eastern Himalayas, is one of India’s most culturally diverse and geographically isolated states. Formerly known as the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA), it became a Union Territory in 1972 and attained full statehood in.....
Poem | Editorial team | 31-Dec-2025
Hon’ble Smt Draupadi Murmu, PRESIDENT OF INDIA Rashtrapati Bhawan New Delhi presidentofindia@rb.nic.in 31st December 2025 Respected Rashtrapatiji, Sub: Christmas attacks on Christians Namaskar! I respectfully place before you some of the.....
Poem | Editorial team | 06-Nov-2025
Attacks Against Christians Increased by 500% Since 2014: Rights Groups New Delhi: On November 4, Christian rights activists assembled at the Press Club of India to release a report about an alarming and sustained annual surge in incidents of violence a.....
Poem | NECARF Rep | 16-Oct-2025
October 14, 2025: Sr Rose Paite, an MSMHC nun from Mizoram, received the prestigious National Award from the Catholic Mental Health Ministry (CMHM) at the World Mental Health Day Conference in Kerala. The prestigious award was handed over to the recipie.....
Poem | Editorial team | 24-Sep-2025
Synodality: Why No, and Why Yes Some have hoped that our new pope would ease up a little on this matter of synodality. Instead, Pope Leo has expressed a strong desire to continue along the path of synodality. For example: “Synodality becomes a mindset, .....
Poem | Chhotebhai | 05-Aug-2026
Can catechism lead to atheism? Not surprisingly, it can. I am sharing below the testimony of a Sunday School teacher of 20 year’s standing. It brought me to tears. If you too are a parent, priest, pastor, catechist, student or a critically aware young per.....
Poem | Chhotebhai | 30-Jul-2026
About 10 bishops and 50 theologians from across the country gathered at the Pastoral Centre, Agra on 25th/ 26th July for the 27th Colloquium of the CBCI’s Commission for Doctrine. As a layman I was the only cockroach. The theme was: A Rereading of the The.....
Poem | Benjamin Chang | 30-Jul-2026
Until 1967, the Catholic Church remained entirely unknown to the Rengma people of Nagaland. The seeds of the faith were first planted through the dedicated efforts of a devout layman, the late Mr. Pralie Paulus Angami of Kohima Village. In 1966, Mr. Prali.....
Poem | John S. Shilshi | 07-Jul-2026
One is not sure how many people in the world would have known or heard about a country by the name of Cabo Verde prior to the commencement of the FIFA World Cup 2026. But beginning with the night the former Portuguese colony created history by holding Spa.....
Poem | Chhotebhai | 07-Jul-2026
The theft and alleged misappropriation of offerings at the Ram Janambhoomi Temple in Ayodhya has been hogging the headlines. Will the big fish be caught? Were huge sums of money siphoned off to purchase the loyalty of wayward MPs from some Opposition Part.....
Poem | Cedric Prakash | 06-Jul-2026
Exactly five years ago, on 5 July 2021, Jesuit Father Stan Swamy was murdered. He was killed because he refused to kow-tow to a brutal, fascist regime. He was killed because he took a stand for justice and truth! He was killed because he accompanied the A.....