Latin Catholic Church calls for action on ‘intolerance’
The Latin Catholic Church’s call for action to create social awareness against increasing attacks on Christians and growing religious intolerance for minorities arguably held attendant electoral ramifications for the duelling political fronts in the runup to Lok Sabha election in Kerala, especially in the coastal districts.
On Sunday, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Latin Catholic Archdiocese of Trivandrum Thomas J. Netto urged the laity to observe prayer and fasting on March 22 as a benign form of protest and social action against the rising tide of religious bigotry and worsening prejudice against minorities.
The Church’s message is arguably a nod to the political narrative that the ascendancy of the Hindu farright outfits posed an existential threat to secularism, democracy, and diversity.
687 attacks in 2023
The Archbishop said that the attacks on Christians had jumped from 147 in 2014 to 687 in 2023.
According to the 2011 census, Latin Catholics constituted 13% of Kerala’s Christians (18% of the total population). They remained a crucial electoral bloc that could sway the prospects of the Left Democratic Front (LDF), the United Democratic Front (UDF), and the BJPled National Democratic Alliance (NDA), especially in Thiruvananthapuram.
The community has rarely behaved as a homogenous voting bloc, given the level of political fractionalisation, chiefly between the UDF and the LDF. However, the ruling front and the Opposition anticipate that the Church’s increasingly vocal concern about rising farright majoritarianism might galvanise the minority community into adopting a more uniform voting pattern in the polls.