India has a problem

Bishop Thomas Dabre, who officiated at the ceremony, described the attack. “Midway through the program, the mob disrupted us, initially by shouting slogans and arguing with some of the 200 people who were assembled. When they did not succeed in dispersing the people, they resorted to violence.”

The mob accused Catholic school staff of trying to convert their children by offering them education and chanted,
“Leave! We don’t want Christians here!”

As the situation quickly deteriorated, Father Brendan Furtado, a guest at the ceremony, called for help by telephone. Even as he made the call, someone in the mob hit him repeatedly with a heavy stick on the back of his neck.

Despite receiving the call for help, police did not arrive until two hours later.

When the mob finally left, more than 60 wooden chairs lay broken amid piles of stones in the courtyard, and there were holes in the roof of the new building.

“These are misguided fundamentalists,” said Dabre. “Fortunately we escaped with our lives, because the stones were pelting us like rain.”