Priest's lust sows storm in Kerala Church
Kerala's influential Catholic Church is currently under a filthy storm following the eruption of a huge scandal pertaining to the abominable sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl from a poor family by a very senior priest of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. The perpetrator of the evil act allegedly is Fr Robin Vadakkumchery, who has now been removed as the Vicar of a parish church in Kannur district, and the victim, a member of his parish, was a Plus 1 student in the school of which he was manager. The tormentor abused the child several times at his parsonage and she gave birth to a baby boy on February 7. Then the cover-up operation started, presumably with the connivance of several respected figures of the Church — like priests, nuns and Church-linked doctors. There was even an effort to hush the scandal by offering money, new house and jobs to her family members and to coerce her own father into agreeing that he himself was the father of his daughter's child. Then, the childbirth itself was kept as a secret, records were tampered with to show that the girl was a major and the baby was taken away from her to a Church-run orphanage after a maliciously irregular adoption process. When the police came to know of the rape despite all the cover-up efforts, the Vicar, who is supposed to act as bridge between the believer and God, tried to flee to Canada but the cops proved themselves to be smarter as they picked him up just before he could reach the Kochi airport. He is now at the place where he actually belongs: Jail. Five Catholic nuns belonging to three different Church-run institutions, a male pediatrician and a woman serving the parish church, have already been named as accused along with the perpetrator priest for very grave offences. It should be noted that these malicious things happened just two months after Pope Francis, fed up with the proliferation of sex scandals involving pedophilic clerics, issued a directive asking Catholic bishops across the world to approach clerical sexual offences to children with zero tolerance. Believers themselves are now up in arms against the top clergy who now faces the charge of trying to protect rapist clerics throughout the recent history of Church but Major Archbishop Mar George Cardinal Alencherry has assured that nothing of that kind will happen in Fr Robin's case.
But this time, believers think justice may prevail not because nobody wants to protect Fr Robin who has strong religious, business and political connections but because, legally speaking, he seems to be beyond salvation: like 42-year-old latin Catholic parish priest Fr Edwin Figarez, a meditation guru and a writer, composer and singer of devotional songs, whom a Kochi court awarded double life imprisonment exactly three months ago for sexually attacking a 14-year-old girl by luring her to his parsonage by exploiting her trust in him and love for God and music praising him. Stories of sexual abuse of women, girls and even boys by clerics and alleged cover-up efforts at top levels of the clergy and conniving political leaderships are nothing new as far the Catholic Church in Kerala is concerned. But all those sitting in responsible positions should understand that sexual abuse inside any religion is not an internal matter.