The head of India's Catholic bishops, speaking out after a nun was raped in the east of the country last week, has said the country should be as concerned about the welfare of its people as it is about its cows.
"The country has a responsibility towards all of us - every human being - and not just cows," Cardinal Baselios Cleemis told journalists. The comments, reported in newspapers on Wednesday, were confirmed by his office.
Maharashtra banned the selling of beef in February and Haryana has since imposed stringent penalties for cow slaughter. Cleemis spoke before visiting the hospitalised nun who was raped at a convent school in West Bengal, an attack which has triggered protests on city streets and in Parliament.
Police have not established whether the assault motive was religion or money. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was "deeply concerned" and demanded a detailed report into what happened.
Cleemis is head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, an Indian branch of the faith that is in communion with Roman Catholicism and that traces its roots back to the Thomas the Apostle, who tradition says arrived here in the first century.
The same weekend as the convent school was attacked, people partly demolished a church being built in Haryana, replacing its cross with a Hindu god's image.
A few days before the demolition, a member of Parliament from the BJP, Subramanian Swamy, was criticised for saying that churches and mosques were not sacred buildings.
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