He prayed like a holy man as she shed tears: Bishop Franco Mulakkal and a nun’s fight for justice

In a first, a protest by five nuns and a sexual assault survivor has led to the arrest of a sitting priest of the Catholic Church, Franco Mulakkal. Indu Antony
26 September, 2018

On the night of 21 September, Franco Mulakkal, a bishop with a Jalandhar diocese of the Catholic Church, was arrested by Kerala Police after three days of questioning in a rape case filed by a nun from a congregation he oversaw. The arrest came 85 days after the nun, from the Missionaries of Jesus in Kuravilangad village of Kottayam district in Kerala, lodged a police complaint accusing him of sexually assaulting her 13 times over a period of two years beginning May 2014. With his bail application denied, Mulakkal has now been remanded to judicial custody till 6 October.

Mulakkal’s arrest comes in the backdrop of an unprecedented public protest by five nuns—Anupama, Josephine, Ancett, Alphy and Nina Rose—affiliated to the congregation, for the survivor. It marks the first time in India that nuns of the community have gone public with a protest against their superiors. This is significant in a religious order that stipulates a culture of obedience among nuns and subordination to the powers in the church, who invariably are male priests. Amid the public outcry, on 20 September, the Vatican temporarily relieved Mulakkal of his religious duties shortly after he sent a letter requesting permission to step down for the time being.

During the course of the protest, three petitions were filed in the Kerala High Court seeking action in the case. Following Mulakkal’s arrest, all three petitions have been dismissed with the court stressing on providing protection to witnesses and the survivor.

On 12 September, the fifth day of the protest, Elsy Ambros, a teacher who lives in Ernakulam, had stopped at the protest venue on her way to work. “We cannot address Franco as Father after what he did,” she told me. Ambros, like many others, was there to extend her support to the protest which was being held 400 metres from the Kerala High Court. The protest in Kochi saw politicians, writers, activists and the general public speak up in favour of the primary demand—Mulakkal’s arrest—even as the nuns sat there day after day holding placards with slogans that painted a rather grim picture of what led to their decision to confront the church and state. “Our life is in danger,” one read. Another asked the question, “Is Franco above the law?”

The survivor, who says that she was sexually abused by the bishop on several occasions between 2014 and 2016, had complained to various authorities in the church’s hierarchy, in person and through letters, since June 2017. After attempts that spanned a year saw no response, she filed a complaint against the bishop with the Kuravilangad Police on 28 June this year. The protest itself was ostensibly a product of the church’s history of silence over sexual abuse and police inaction for over two months since the complaint.

However, voices from within the church have so far either remained mum or harshly criticised the protests. The Kerala Catholic Bishop Council, or KCBC, for instance, insinuated that there are vested interests operating to tarnish the church and bishop community, while also stating that the protests had “crossed all limits.” The KCBC spokesperson was unavailable for comments despite repeated attempts to contact him.

Between 2014 and 2016, the bishop made frequent trips from Jalandhar to the St Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad, where the survivor lives, and sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions. “On May 6, 2014, it was my son’s first communion. It was on the previous day that my sister was raped,” the survivor’s elder sister told me, describing the first occasion when the nun was raped. “This Father had presided over the communion. If I knew that the man had performed the communion after doing something so dirty, I wouldn’t have let my son receive communion from him. He prayed like a holy man while my sister was shedding tears.” She explained, “I assumed that she was crying as I was mourning at the time. I had lost my husband some time before the communion.”

The survivor withheld her ordeal from her family, friends and colleagues for over a year. She said that while the sexual abuse stopped in mid-2016 after she refused to co-operate, harassment in the form of disciplinary actions continued unabated. Her initial response to the sustained abuse was to quietly leave the congregation in May 2017. However, when numerous other nuns decided to leave with her—the survivor had served as Superior General, the executive head of a religious order in the church, for over nine years—she chose to stay back to keep the congregation alive. Around this time, other members of the congregation and her family were made privy to her torment and they took the decision to approach church authorities.

On 8 September, the day the protest began, the survivor sent a letter to Giambattista Diquattro, the apostolic nuncio—the Pope’s representative—to India, outlining in detail her attempts to appeal to authorities in the church. This was her second letter to the apostolic nuncio, she wrote the first on 28 January 2018, after repeated bids to meet him in person failed. When the first letter elicited no response for over five months, she then shot off letters to the Vatican in May this year, which also went unanswered.

“In the month of June 2017, I met Rev. Fr. Joseph Thadathil the Parish Priest of Kuravilangad Church and also Bishop Joseph Kallarangatt the Bishop of Palai Diocese,” the survivor wrote in this latest letter. “I have explained to them about the sexual exploitation that I suffered from Bp. Franco from 2014 to 2016 and his continued torture through various means from the time I took courage and resisted him.” During the course of 2017, she met people in powerful positions in the church, including Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, the head of Syro Malabar Church.

In November 2017, the bishop began to resort to pressure tactics through the police, the survivor alleged in the letter. “On 30 November 2017, I received a call from the ASI Mr Amrik Singh that the Punjab police has received a complaint against Sr. Anupama and myself of having threatened bishop Franco that we would commit suicide,” she wrote to the papal ambassador. On 19 June, a complaint was filed against the survivor’s brother accusing him of threatening to murder the bishop. A few days later, a case with similar charges was filed against family members of the five nuns who supported the survivor. “It was alleged that our family members are conspiring to kill the father. Our superiors also accused us of participating in a conspiracy to kill him,” Josephine told me. The survivor shot off another letter to the Vatican in the face of these police cases, but to no avail. The decision to approach the police was made in light of the police cases and the church’s continued silence. All the cases registered against the family members have been subsequently dismissed as baseless.

On the sixth day of the protest, I met Anupama in a flat in the vicinity of the high court junction. She paused frequently during our conversation to clear her sore throat because she had been talking to the media in marathon interviews since the protest began. Talking to me about the apathy of Regina, the current Superior General of their congregation, she said, “If we approached her for anything, she was not interested in even listening to us. Shouldn’t she at least say, ‘Don’t worry. We will solve it.’? Even that didn’t happen.” According to Anupama, Regina and the councillors do exactly what the bishop tells them. “If he tells us to sit there, we have to sit there. If he tells them to drive us out, they will drive us out. Do whatever he says. If he asks them to kill us, they will do that as well.”

Anupama said mental harassment by Mulakkal had been a feature of their life long before the complaint of sexual exploitation came up. “When he took over as the bishop, he started destroying the diocese. Only a few days after the death of our founder Father, Bishop Symphorian Keeprath, Bishop Franco told us, ‘I will bury you with your founder.’” When asked about the reason behind his hostility, she replied, “As far as we understand, the bishop started a new congregation. He wanted to destroy our congregation and promote his own congregation—Intercessors of Missionaries of Jesus.” As per the survivor’s letter, 20 nuns have left the congregation during the last five years, a statement Anupama confirmed.

The nuns also contend that Mulakkal has powerful supporters beyond his diocese. They cite the case of James Erthayil, a priest with Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, who approached the nuns with an offer to build a convent for them on ten acres of land in Kanjirapally, in Kottayam, if they withdrew the complaint. Anupama recounted, “On the evening of 28 July, he called me. He said that he will get a convent built in ten acres of land somewhere in Kanjirapally. Without any help, this Father cannot get us even one cent of land. And when it’s ten acres, how can Father say this if someone has not offered it to him? It was obvious to us that there are many people at play behind this,” Anupama explained. In the recording of the conversation, Erthayil says that “they will support” the construction of the convent. When the nun asks if he is referring to the Jalandhar diocese, he responds in the affirmative. Erthayil, who had surrendered in court on charges of attempting to influence the case, is presently out on bail.

Apart from attempts to bribe the nuns, there was also a concerted effort to raise questions about the survivor’s character and motivations. The public relations officer of Missionaries of Jesus, Amala, issued a press statement listing various accusations questioning the character of the survivor. The congregation authorities then released a photograph of the survivor sitting with the bishop at a function supposedly held a day after the first assault. Citing this as proof that none of the incidents alleged by the survivor took place, the congregation stated that they are not responsible if the photo becomes public.

A Jalandhar-based priest, who is a cousin of the survivor, told me about his attempt to intercede on behalf of the survivor. “Myself and nine other priests met the bishop in March this year. I asked the bishop, ‘What is the issue that you have with my sister? Just tell me. We will solve it. Why did you file a complaint?’ He said, I did not file it. My PRO must have. I don’t know the reason.” After the case against Mulakkal was filed, the cousin met the bishop again. “I told him, ‘To save the face of the church, please step down.’ He challenged me saying that he will prove his innocence in court,” the cousin recalled. The cousin added that he has been alienated by others in the diocese in Jalandhar for standing with his sister. “The law of the church is to isolate those who speak up in public. No one should speak the truth. They are not saving the church. They are saving this Father,” he told me.

The protesting nuns and family members of the survivor said they were compelled to take to the streets after their requests to every authority in the church went unanswered. “There is not a door in the church that we haven’t knocked,” the cousin said. “We grew up as Christians and were taught that we shouldn’t hurt the priests or our family will be cursed,” the survivor’s elder sister added, explaining that publicly taking on the church was a difficult decision for the family. “It is still painful for us to do this. But none of the priests gave us justice.”

Joseph Velivil, advisor in the JCC, told me, “Nuns are expected to abide by the three vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. It is because of the rule of obedience that the nuns remain silent.”

The six nuns from Kuravilangad have become an exception to this norm of silence. Anupama sounded unyielding when she told me, “We have done nothing wrong. Our mother [the survivor] has done nothing wrong. We have come here with the strong belief that the truth will not deceive us, even if it means that we have to die to get justice for that sister.”