Mark Riedemann for “Where God Weeps” in cooperation with Aid to the Church in Need interviews Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai in India.
Q: Why is Blessed John Paul II, like Mother Theresa, so particularly loved by the Hindu community?
Cardinal Gracias: I think it was his authenticity. He was a man of deep, deep faith. We just celebrated, recently, the silver jubilee of his pastoral visit to India. I installed a statue of Pope John Paul II in my cathedral, just outside the cathedral and people are coming over there, Catholics and Hindus to pray to Blessed John Paul II. The message he gave not only [was] what he said but also the way he said it. Wherever he went he loved the people, loved the country. He was very, very genuine, authentic as I was saying, but he was a man of deep faith, he trusted in the Lord, he left everything in the hands of Jesus, and he loved the Father; great devotion to Our Lady. So I think that impressed people very much. And even Hindus saw in him as a man of God. They felt that he was a person who really is preaching God in what he says, what he does and how he lives.
Q: Although the Church has been there for two millennia, the Catholic Church -or Christianity- is still seen as a foreign body. Do you see this and why?
Cardinal Gracias: Often people have said [it] and I think in the minds of many [Hindus] the Church is … or has a foreign element in it. Possibly one reason is because we always had foreign leaders and bishops -now there is not a single bishop who is not Indian- until Cardinal Gracias, who was Archbishop of Bombay in the 50’s. He was the first Indian Archbishop of Bombay... Then the fact that we haven’t fully enculturated our liturgical services, our prayer services. We have remained a little bit too -I am in the Congregation of Sacraments- Roman in that sense, and not sufficiently Indian. Now we are making efforts and the Congregation in Rome is helping [with] this and to see this importance of enculturation. And the more we become enculturated, I think, the more people will see that we [are] truly Indian. Because Christianity in India is from the first Apostle in 52 or so. St. Thomas [is] supposed to have come to India.
Q: What is the role of Our Lady?
Cardinal Gracias: Our Lady is the favourite of everybody, in a sense even among the Hindus. In my own home Parish, we have novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help every Wednesday from 8:30 am to 9:30 pm every hour and on the hour. And about 70 000 or 80 000 people come every Wednesday over there. I was told that 60 to 70 % of people who come there are not Christians; just to pray to Our Lady. Our Lady is seen as a mother. She is seen as a way that a mother is not threatening. They don’t feel that she is a threat to them, or to their culture or even their religion in that sense. People have different devotion to her. I remember several years back when Our Lady of Nazareth came to Bombay and I accompanied the statue to some Parishes where people came and prayed and the Catholic crowds remained. What struck me very much as I was going –I was a little worried because it was the time of Hindu fundamentalist violence and therefore we had a police escort– is that the Hindus would stand by the roadside and give reverence to the statue. There wasn’t a single incident. It was very impressive how everybody stood there asking her blessings and praying too. She is seen as a mother, caring, loving, bringing favours to people, bringing graces to people, healing divisions. So Mary is an important key to this.
