Bishop in India Charged With Raping Nun Over a 2-Year Period

In official police complaints, the nun’s family accused Bishop Mulakkal of raping her multiple times over a two-year period starting from May 5, 2014. The assaults occurred at the nun’s convent, the St. Francis Mission Home, in a forested part of Kerala, which is home to many of India’s 20 million Catholics.

The nun first approached the church authorities about the abuse in January 2017. She contacted nearly a dozen church officials. Some told the nun that the church would take action; others dissuaded her from going to the police, her family said.

“No sooner I reached the room than he pulled me toward him,” the nun wrote in a letter to Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, the pope’s representative in India, on Jan. 28, 2018. “I was numbed and terrified by his act. I took all efforts to get out, but in vain. He raped me brutally.”

But the church did not take action until last fall, when five nuns protested at Kerala’s High Court after hearing about the assaults while staying at the St. Francis Mission Home. They sat in front of a large poster depicting Virgin Mary holding a nun’s lifeless body. One placard read, “Justice for nuns.”

Last September, about two weeks after the protests started, the Kerala police arrested Bishop Mulakkal and the Vatican asked him not to conduct Mass.

Still, Bishop Mulakkal’s detention did not last long. When he was released on bail in October, his supporters showered him with flower petals. He returned to his diocese, where a banner offered him a “hearty welcome.”