NEW DELHI (LifeSiteNews) — India’s Ministry of Affairs refused to renew Mother Teresa’s charity’s registration following accusations that the Catholic missionaries have been converting Hindus.
On December 27, India’s Ministry of Affairs confirmed that on Christmas, the government rejected the Missionaries of Charity’s request to have their Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) permit renewed, citing “adverse inputs.” The FCRA permit allows charities to use foreign money to fund charitable work within the nation, and while the official document did not elaborate on what is meant by the term “adverse inputs,” Mother Teresea’s Missionaries of Charity have been consistently criticized by the anti-Christian Indian government for allegedly forcing Hindus to convert to Christianity.
Despite the Missionaries of Charity making no mention of converting members of other religions in their mission statement, and maintaining an emphasis on giving “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor,” the majority-Hindu government, which has been growing rapidly in anti-Christian sentiment, has accused the group in both an official and non-official capacity, of “forcing” Hindus into conversion.
While the group has denied the unsubstantiated accusations, police in the western state of Gujarat filed a legal case against a homeless shelter for girls run by the Missionaries of Charity in early December. According to the legal filing, the missionaries operating the shelter have been forcing Hindu girls to marry into Christian families.
The rejection of the group’s renewal is but one of the many anti-Christian events that has been sweeping the nation of India this Christmas season.
According to NPR, “On Christmas Eve, Hindu extremists burned effigies of Santa Claus in Agra, a town in northern India that’s home to the iconic Taj Mahal, India’s most-touristed monument. Elsewhere, Hindu extremists disrupted church services and Nativity plays, and vandalized statues of Jesus.”
The Missionaries of Charity, established in 1950 by Mother Teresa, have grown into one of the most recognized Catholic communities in the world. While the group operates in a global capacity, its work in India has been most notable because of the late Mother Teresa, and has dozens of institutions in India intended to feed and aid impoverished locals.
Due to the fact that Christians represent only 2.3 percent of India’s population, the Missionaries of Charity rely heavily on foreign contributions to fund their operations, making the recent actions of the Indian government especially damaging for their mission.