Dutch missionary asked to leave India

(July 12, 2010) Catholic Church leaders in India have expressed dismay at a government expulsion order against a Dutch missionary who has served in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir for 47 years. The order against Mill Hill Missionary Father Jim Borst was “unexpected,” said Bishop Peter Celestine Elampassery of Jammu-Srinagar diocese. He said the Church will conduct “all efforts” to get the order cancelled. The Foreigners Registration Office had told the priest to leave India by the end of July. The priest has been working in India’s only Muslim-majority state since 1963. Catholics in the state want the missionary to “stay in Kashmir and be buried here,” the Capuchin prelate said. He said Church officials have already approached the government to explain that the missionary is “here to work for the poor.” Father Babu Joseph, the spokesperson of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, CBCI, said the circumstances leading to the expulsion order “need to be investigated.” “It is a myopic policy of the government to unceremoniously order missionaries like Father Borst to leave,” Father Joseph said adding that the Dutch priest “has been doing tremendous work.” Mill Hill Missionaries pioneered education and healthcare in the state in the early 19th century. Father Borst is principal of the Good Shepherd School in Kashmir Valley. Some Muslim groups have accused him of using the school as a cover for converting people, an allegtion which Bishop Elampassery said is “baseless.”