FOREIGN FUNDING OF MOTHER TERESA’S CHARITY CUT

India has blocked a charity founded by Mother Teresa from accepting foreign donations for its humanitarian work.

It was not made clear why the government refused Monday to renew the license of the organization, the Missionaries of Charity, under the country’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. The group can appeal, but for now, a major source of funding has been cut off.

The news came around a tense Christmastime, when churches have been vandalized and celebrations interrupted by hundreds of rightwing Hindus across the country.

The rise in attacks on Christians, who make up about 2 percent of India’s population, is part of a broader shift in which religious minorities feel less safe. Anti-Christian vigilantes are sweeping through villages, storming churches, burning Christian literature, attacking schools and assaulting worshippers. Right-wing Hindus have confronted Muslims during Friday prayers in the northern state of Haryana in recent months. At a conference last week, hundreds of right-wing Hindu monks openly called for Muslims to be killed, in their quest to turn India, constitutionally a secular republic, into a Hindu nation.

In October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited Pope Francis to visit India, home to one of Asia’s oldest and largest Christian populations. But it remains to be seen if the government’s latest move to cut off the Christian charity’s foreign funding will complicate that invitation.

Under Modi’s government, India has also been tightening rules on foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations. It has placed restrictions on many Christian and Muslim nonprofits and put others on a watch list for violating Indian laws, especially the laws concerning religious conversions.

Nonprofits are required to file detailed financial statements of their foreign funds and how they use them in India and are restricted from receiving those funds until their licenses are approved by the government.

Sunita Kumar, a spokeswoman for the Missionaries of Charity in the eastern city of Kolkata, where it is based, expressed confidence Tuesday that the licensing issue could be resolved. She said the charity’s work would not be affected immediately, though it gets a large chunk of its income from overseas donors. “There’s enough locally also that’s given, so we can handle that,” she said, without explaining how long it would be able to sustain its work with only local donations.