Did Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, head of the mighty Kerala-based Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, violate the Commandment, “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”, in order to protect Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the latin Catholic Diocese of Jalandhar who has been accused of raping a senior nun several times in two yearsIJ
An audio clip containing a recorded phone conversation between the victim and the Cardinal suggests that Mar Alencherry might have not spoken the truth to the people of the State and the Kerala Police when he told them that he had not received any complaint containing rape charge against the Bishop from the nun and that was why he had not alerted the police about it.
“You may go to the police or the court as you like. But never tell anyone that you are doing it on my advice… If the police ask me about this I will tell them I don’t know anything,” the Cardinal is heard telling the nun over the phone in the audio-clip in response to her statement that she was planning to petition the police and the court against Bishop Mulakkal.
“If you have been subjected to persecution (by the Bishop), it is not at all proper… Those who have wronged should learn lessons. If (the Bishop) has committed wrong, he must learn a lesson. But you don’t have any evidence to show that he has wronged, do youIJ” he is heard asking the nun in the phone talk. “Yes, there is evidence,” the nun replies to him over the phone.
On Wednesday, the Cardinal had told the police team which questioned him in connection with the nun rape case that she had met him but had not given any complaint about her alleged rape by the Jalandhar Bishop. Instead, what she had spoken to him was about some problems she was facing in her convent associated with the Jalandhar Diocese, he had said.
In her statements to the police and before a court, the nun, now 48, had said that Bishop Franco Mulakkal had sexually abused her using threats 13 times in two years. According to her, the Bishop had first raped her on May 5, 2014 at a guest house affiliated to her convent in Kuravilangad in Kottayam district during his visit to Kerala for attending a Church function.
Immediately after the audio clip of the Cardinal-nun phone conversation came out in the media, the Syro-Malabar Church confirmed its authenticity but it was quick to claim that the audio was being propagated to spread misinformation for defaming Mar Alencherry and the Church. The nun had not mentioned the rape complaint anywhere in her conversation, it claimed.
What is more appalling about the Cardinal’s advice to the nun, according to a section of the laity, is his refusal — as is apparent in the audio clip — to help her get an appointment with the Apostolic Nuncio, The Vatican’s representative in India, or the president of the latin Catholic Episcopal body, Conference of Catholic Bishops in India, to bring her plight to their notice.
In the phone conversation, Mar Alencherry is heard offering to help her if she and the other nuns who have similar complaints if they come back to the Syro-Malabar Rite of the Catholic Church from the latin Catholic Church. Even then, he is not making any concrete promise to her about taking care of them despite her repeated queries.
A complaint is pending with the Kochi police seeking legal action against the Cardinal, who is already facing allegations of involvement in a mega land scam in his Church’s Ernakulam—Angamaly Archdiocese of which he is the Major Archbishop, for not informing the authorities about an extremely serious offence like the nun-rape incident even after coming to know of it.
“The Cardinal has committed violation of the Commandment, Thou shalt not bear false witness,” said an office-bearer of the Archdiocesan Movement for Transparency. As per the audio-clip, he had adopted a very clever approach to the issue. His idea must have been to get the nun out of her church cleverly and thus protect the Jalandhar Bishop,” he said.