| [Excerpts...] NEW DELHI, India (AP) - A Hindu fundamentalist group said Saturday that Pope
John Paul II should use his visit to India next month to remove apprehensions about what
it called forced conversions by Christian missionaries.
``Mass conversion with a set date before them is incompatible
with any spiritual motive,'' Ashok Singhal, international working president of the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad, or the World Hindu Council, told reporters in New Delhi.
Singhal claimed that more than 100,000 Christian missionaries
working in India were forcing poor Hindu villagers to convert. His group is organizing a
940-mile protest march by Hindu nationalists that will start from Goa in southwestern
India next week and reach New Delhi on Nov. 4, the eve of the pope's arrival.
[...]
The Roman Catholic archbishop of New Delhi, Alan de Lastic, has
rejected Hindu fundamentalists' charges of forced conversions, saying they have never
produced any proof.
[...]
The federal government says all the attacks on Christians have
been investigated, and many of them were linked to local land and property disputes. |
