Church leaders misleading Christian community about BJP, RSS: PCLM

New Delhi, June 18: The Poor Christian Liberation Movement (PCML) has accused the “Church leaders” of misleading the Christian community. Senior columnist and President of PCML R L Francis alleged that the Protestant and Catholic Churches are spreading falsehood and canard against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and also against the Union Government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Addressing a meeting of the Protestant padres in Delhi Francis alleged that the Church Leaders are using the incidents of so-called attacks on the Christians and churches in some states to spread such falsehood in a most systematic way through their ‘Sunday Mass’.

This process has witnessed greater momentum after the support to the letters by DelhiArchbishop Anil Cuoto and Goa and Daman Archbishop Philip Nery Feraro. Both the Archbishops have appealed to the ‘faithful’ community to pray and keep fast to elect a ‘new government that will honour plurality of the society and protect the Constitution that is facing a grave danger’.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) and National Council of Churches in India (NCCI) , the apex bodies of Catholic and Protestant Churches have supported the call of the Archbishops which underlined that ‘democracy and constitution were in danger’.

Francis said that the Church leaders were busy trying to show to the international community that Christians are not safe in Delhi and India under the present dispensation of the NDA led by BJP and Narendra Modi.

Francis further said that a section of the Church leadership seems to be so eager and impatient to show to the world how Christians are being persecuted in India by the Narendra Modi-led Government and the RSS that they have issued a free helpline phone number so that it can project the ‘plight’ of the Christians.

 Francis recalled how the same church leaders were busy during the tenure of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to fulfil their vested interests and now the same leadership have become active as the general elections are approaching to change the government at the centre. Francis said that had these church leaders have opened a free helpline for the poor Christians to solve their problems it would have helped them. He appealed to Protestant padres to work to save the Christian community from getting confused due to this misleading propaganda.

Francis further said that the church has engaged itself in a strategy to creating an atmosphere against the BJP before the 2019 general elections. He challenged the church leaders to show how many complaints were received on this free helpline and by how many Christian organisations? He said that the Christian community has been living in peace and harmony with their Hindu brethren in different states and appealed to the church leaders to stop their misleading propaganda lest the communal harmony gets disturbed.