Vatican intervention is sought to safeguard the rights of religious minorities in India
Jul 19, 2025

Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher (left) met with India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on July 17 in New Delhi amid calls from Christians for Vatican intervention to end increasing anti-Christian violence in India. (Photo: Facebook)

By Bijay Kumar Minj
Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, met with India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar amid calls to make increasing attacks against Christians a bilateral discussion point.

Gallagher, on a week-long visit to India, met Jaishankar in New Delhi on July 17, the third day after arriving, following some church functions and meetings with church officials.

Jaishankar, in a social media post, said he was “pleased” to meet the Vatican official. It was “a good conversation about the importance of faith, and the need for dialogue and diplomacy to address conflicts,” the post said.

Neither the Vatican nor India issued any public statements on the issues the officials discussed. Church officials in India also refused to comment on the “conflicts” Jaishankar mentioned in his post.

However, the archbishop was asked to take up the increasing Hindu attacks against Christians in bilateral dialogues with Indian officials in a memorandum that an ecumenical Christian group submitted.

The violence against Christians “should be taken up in bilateral human rights dialogues with India, specifically highlighting the targeted use of anti-conversion laws on religious minorities,” said the memorandum United Christian Forum (UCF) submitted to Gallagher.

The Vatican’s engagement should not be limited to the federal government but also include state governments that “aggressively enforce” anti-conversion laws, it said.

Archbishop Anil Joseph Couto of Delhi submitted the memorandum on behalf of the group during a meeting with Gallagher at the Vatican Nunciature in New Delhi on July 17.

The memorandum wanted the Vatican to issue official statements “condemning the rising incidents of violence and systemic discrimination against Christians in India.”

It also wanted the Vatican to take steps to “ensure judicial transparency” in trials under anti-conversion laws and to have “monitoring and fact-finding missions” to assess ground realities, particularly in states witnessing recurring violence.

“Anti-Christian violence has been consistently increasing,”  A. C. Michael, convenor of the ecumenical forum, told UCA News, pointing to the numbers in the memorandum.

The forum, which documents violence targeted at Christians in the country, recorded 834 incidents in 2024, from 734 incidents in 2023.

Christian leaders say attacks against Christians have increased since 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power for the first time, winning a landslide for his Hindu-leaning Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

They say the BJP, and Hindu groups supporting it, took the political victory as a mandate to push for their aim of turning India into a nation of Hindu hegemony, stamping out religious minorities like Christians and Muslims.   

“The primary reason for these attacks has been false allegations of fraudulent conversions,” he said, as states like Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh report more cases compared to others.

The anti-conversion laws are active in 11 of India’s 28 states and make it a criminal offence to use force, fraud, or allurement in converting people.

Michael said these terms “are ambiguous and frequently exploited to target Christians” as any missionary service, “even a prayer service,” could be construed as allurement or force.

The Vatican intervention is “vital to safeguarding the rights of religious minorities and upholding human dignity” in India, Michael said.–ucanews.com