As the pope canonizes an Indian, Hindus are terrorizing India’s Christian community.

This weekend, Pope Benedict XVI canonized an Indian woman whose life was noted for its holiness.

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday gave the Roman Catholic church four new saints, including an Indian woman whose canonization is seen as a morale boost to Christians in India who have suffered Hindu violence.

Thousands of faithful from the homelands of the new saints, including a delegation from India, where Catholics are a tiny minority, turned out for the ceremony in St. Peter's Square.

The honor for Sister Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception, the first Indian woman to become a saint, comes as Christians increasingly have been the object of attacks from Hindu mobs in eastern and southern India.

Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, had beatified Alphonsa during a pilgrimage to India in 1986. Beatification is the last formal step before sainthood, the Church's highest honor for its faithful. Alphonsa, a nun from southern India, was 35 when she died in 1946.

Now this canonization should surprise no one with a knowledge of the religious history of India. Christianity spread to the region as early as the first and second centuries, and missionaries found a vibrant Christian minority in the region when modern Catholic missionary activity began there over five centuries ago. Even so, Christians account for only two percent of India’s population.

Which is part of why this next story is so disturbing.

India, the world’s most populous democracy and officially a secular nation, is today haunted by a stark assault on one of its fundamental freedoms. Here in eastern Orissa State, riven by six weeks of religious clashes, Christian families like the Digals say they are being forced to abandon their faith in exchange for their safety.

The forced conversions come amid widening attacks on Christians here and in at least five other states across the country, as India prepares for national elections next spring.
The clash of faiths has cut a wide swath of panic and destruction through these once quiet hamlets fed by paddy fields and jackfruit trees. Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze.

Across this ghastly terrain lie the singed remains of mud-and-thatch homes. Christian-owned businesses have been systematically attacked. Orange flags (orange is the sacred color of Hinduism) flutter triumphantly above the rooftops of houses and storefronts.

Interestingly enough, the Indian government seems impotent in the face of these attacks. Why? Perhaps because of the political power that fundamentalist Hindu parties hold in the Indian political system – and because there is no political price to pay for protecting the human rights of Indian Christians.