The article from EWTN News portal reports on the arrest and denial of bail for nine Catholics in Rajasthan, India, after they defended their church from a mob that stormed a Mass to shout accusations of “conversion.” Instead of prosecuting the intruders—who disrupted the Holy Sacrifice and brandished a knife—authorities charged the faithful with “conversion and attempted murder” under the 2025 Rajasthan Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act. The burden of proof falls on the accused. Bishop Devprasad John Ganawa expressed frustration at the denial of bail, while A.C. Michael of the United Christian Forum condemned the abuse of anti-conversion laws as tools to harass minorities. This case exposes not only the persecution of the Faith but the utter bankruptcy of “religious freedom” as understood by modern secular states—and the silence of the post-conciliar structures in the face of martyrdom.
The Primacy of the Faith Over “Religious Freedom”
The article presents the situation through the lens of religious freedom, a concept enshrined in the Indian Constitution’s Article 25 and invoked by the bishops’ conference in Bangalore. Yet this very framing reveals the theological rot at the heart of post-conciliar Catholicism. The conciliar document Dignitatis Humanae (1965) proclaimed a “right to religious freedom” grounded in the dignity of the human person—a direct contradiction of the perennial Catholic doctrine that error has no rights and that the Catholic State has the duty to restrict the public exercise of false religions. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned as error #77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to exclude all other forms of worship.” Error #78 further condemned the public exercise of non-Catholic worship as lawful. Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885), taught that the State must publicly profess the true religion and that “the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of the citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favor and support.”
The bishops’ demand for the “repealing of legislations which are inconsistent with religious freedom” is not a defense of the Faith—it is a capitulation to the very liberalism that has destroyed Christendom. The martyrs of old did not die for “religious freedom” in the modern sense; they died for the exclusive kingship of Christ over all nations. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), declared: “The rulers of states therefore should not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but should fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” The faithful in Rajasthan are not victims of a “violation of human rights”—they are confessors of the Faith suffering under a pagan state that has never submitted to Christ the King.
The Inversion of Justice: Persecutors as Victims
The article details how a mob of more than a dozen people stormed the church during Mass—specifically during Communion time—shouting accusations of conversion and filming with cameras, with one intruder brandishing a knife. The parishioners disarmed the knife-wielder and expelled the intruders. Yet the police arrested the Catholics, refused to register their complaint, and charged them with “conversion and attempted murder.” Under the 2025 Rajasthan anti-conversion law, the burden of proof falls on the accused to disprove the allegation of conversion.
This is a diabolical inversion of justice that mirrors the condemnation of Our Lord Himself. As the Prophet Isaiah foretold: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). The faithful in Kalinjara village are treated as criminals for the crime of defending the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—the unbloody renewal of Calvary—from sacrilegious desecration. The intruder who drew a knife during the most sacred moment of Catholic worship committed an act of blasphemy and sacrilege, yet he walks free while the faithful rot in prison.
The article notes that “there has been hardly any conviction in so-called conversion cases.” This reveals the true purpose of these laws: not justice, but harassment, intimidation, and the gradual strangulation of the Church. The faithful are kept in legal limbo, their lives destroyed, their communities terrorized—not because they are guilty, but because they are Catholic. This is persecution in its purest form, and it is enabled by a legal system that has abandoned the natural law.
The Silence of the “Global Church” and the Bankruptcy of Ecumenical Diplomacy
The article mentions that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India assembly in Bangalore “reiterated concern” in its final statement, demanding the repeal of laws “inconsistent with religious freedom and right to privacy.” This is the language of liberal democracy, not of the Catholic Church. Where is the language of martyrdom? Where is the call to evangelize India, to convert the Hindoo to the true Faith, to plant the Cross in the temples of idols? Where is the echo of Pope Leo XIII’s Ad Extremas (1893), which called for the conversion of India and the establishment of a native clergy to spread the Gospel?
Instead, the bishops speak the language of the United Nations—”human rights,” “religious freedom,” “privacy.” This is the fruit of Nostra Aetate (1965) and the entire conciliar revolution, which replaced the missionary mandate with interreligious dialogue and the equal dignity of all religions. Pope St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), condemned the Modernist proposition that “the Church should be separated from the State” (error #55 of the Syllabus) and that “the progress of sciences requires a reform of the concept of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, Revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption” (error #64 of Lamentabili Sane Exitu).
The bishops’ conference does not call for the conversion of India. It does not invoke the kingship of Christ over the Hindoo nation. It does not demand that the Indian State recognize the Catholic Church as the one true Church. Instead, it asks for “freedom” within a secular framework—a framework that is inherently hostile to the Faith. This is not the voice of the Church Militant; it is the voice of a conciliar sect that has exchanged the Cross for a seat at the table of liberal democracy.
The Question of True Martyrdom and the Failure of the Faithful
The article describes the faithful as “parishioners” and “Catholics”—but the question must be asked: What manner of Catholics are these? Are they faithful to the Traditional Latin Mass, the unchanging sacraments, and the integral Catholic Faith? Or are they members of the post-conciliar structures that have reduced the Mass to a “table of assembly” and the sacraments to mere symbols?
The article provides no information on the liturgical practices of Bandaria Parish. If this is a parish of the conciar sect—celebrating the Novus Ordo Missae, receiving “communion” from a “priest” ordained under the reformed rites of Paul VI—then the “Mass” disrupted by the mob was not the Most Holy Sacrifice of Calvary but a Protestantized memorial meal devoid of propitiatory value. The “communion” distributed was not the true Body and Blood of Christ but, at best, an invalid ceremony and, at worst, an act of idolatry.
This is not to justify the persecution—persecution is always evil, regardless of the victim’s state of faith. But it is to raise the question of spiritual preparedness. The early Christians rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name” (Acts 5:41). They did not appeal to Caesar for “religious freedom”; they confessed Christ before governors and kings, knowing that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The faithful in Rajasthan, if they are truly Catholic, must be prepared not for legal battles in the High Court but for martyrdom—for the shedding of their blood for the true Faith, not for the “right” to practice a watered-down religion in a secular democracy.
The Duty of Catholic States and the Pagan Nature of India
The article implicitly accepts the legitimacy of the Indian State and its legal system. But from the perspective of integral Catholic teaching, India is a pagan state that has never received the Faith in its fullness. The Catholic Church has always taught that the State has a duty to recognize the true religion and to promote the salvation of souls. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “The State is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the State is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The State’s happiness depends on its submission to Christ the King.
India’s anti-conversion laws are not merely “abused”—they are inherently unjust because they criminalize the act of bringing souls to the true Faith. The Great Commission—”Go therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19)—is not subject to the permission of secular governments. The Church has always taught that the act of conversion to the true Faith is a supreme good, not a crime. Pope Gregory XVI, in Mirari Vos (1832), condemned the notion that “the Church has no force” and that “the Church has no power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (error #21 of the Syllabus).
The faithful in Rajasthan are not criminals. They are suspects in the eyes of a pagan state—a state that has chosen the worship of idols over the worship of the true God. The solution is not to appeal to the Indian Supreme Court or to the “human rights” framework of liberal democracy. The solution is the conversion of India to Catholicism—a mission that the post-conciliar structures have abandoned in favor of “dialogue” and “religious freedom.”
Conclusion: The Blood of Martyrs and the Silence of the Conciliar Sect
The nine Catholics languishing in a Rajasthan jail are, in the eyes of the world, “criminals” charged with “conversion and attempted murder.” In the eyes of the true Church, they are confessors of the Faith—suffering for the crime of being Catholic in a land that has rejected Christ. But the structures that claim to represent the Catholic Church in India—the bishops’ conference, the “priests,” the “parishes”—are themselves suspect. Are they faithful to the unchanging Catholic Faith, or are they agents of the conciliar revolution that has gutted the Church from within?
The article from EWTN News, well-intentioned as it may be, frames the crisis in the language of liberal democracy rather than in the language of martyrdom and the kingship of Christ. It appeals to “religious freedom” rather than to the duty of the State to recognize the true religion. It invokes the Indian Constitution rather than the Syllabus of Errors. This is the tragedy of the post-conciliar Church: it has lost the language of the Faith and speaks only the language of the world.
The faithful in Rajasthan deserve more than legal appeals and diplomatic protests. They deserve the fullness of the Catholic Faith—the true Mass, the true sacraments, the true doctrine of the Church’s exclusive salvific mission. Until the structures of the Catholic Church in India return to the unchanging Tradition, the blood of the martyrs will cry out not for justice but for the conversion of the shepherds themselves.
Source:
Indian Catholics denied bail after confronting mob that disrupted Mass (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 18.05.2026