Poles upset with Pope’s remarks on India

WARSAW: Many Polish Indophiles, most of them Catholics, are upset over Pope Benedict XVI’s complaint to the Indian ambassador about the treatment of Christians in India.

Krzysztof Mrozwicz, a former Polish ambassador to India, said he was surprised and shocked the Pope had made uncharitable remarks about Indian society. “The fact of the matter is India is the most secular country in Asia if not in the world. It seems that the Pope has been wrongly briefed by his advisors.”

“An Italian born and a Catholic by birth, Sonia Gandhi is leading the century-old Congress party and guiding the nation. What else he could have expected from an Indian polity to show its record of tolerance and freedom of practising one’s own religion there?”

Anna Bem, an Indophile married to an Indian professor and who lived in New Delhi in the early 1980s says, “It seems there is a hidden agenda to make life difficult for 26 million Christians in India by some vested interests by raising false alarms. It is time the Vatican issued a statement to withdraw its uncharitable remarks.