The old Roman political maxim of divide and rule is still in effect in Asia in dealings with the Church. Or so asserts Orlando Woods, a social scientist. In a 2022 article, Woods notes that Sri Lankan Catholics, a well-established minority advocacy group, have been protesting since a secret deal was made in 2010 with China to construct a new Colombo Financial City in the nation’s capital.
This project, funded by the Chinese government, will construct luxury flats and hotels, among other benefits for the wealthy, but also destroy the livelihoods of a local Catholic community of impoverished fishing families. The result will measure 269 hectares or roughly the size of central London and will take over 25 years to complete.
The Church has been vocal in protecting the lives of these modest laborers. The Catholic Sisters of Charity and the Nuns of the Holy Family have maintained long associations with the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement (NAFSO). In 2016, a Via Crucis was staged with 500 nuns, priests, and other faithful marching through the streets of Negombo, a city on the west coast of Sri Lanka, north of Colombo.
Along a 1.5 mile route, a heavy wooden cross was carried to St. Sebastian’s Church, a Gothic Revival structure architecturally inspired by the Cathedral of Reims, France.
Women protesters were quoted in the media to the effect that their own cross to bear was the threat of the port development project.
Fr. Patrick Perera, vicar general of the deanery of Negombo, told AsiaNews: “The Church in Sri Lanka is not opposed to the development of the country, but rejects the projects that, in the name of development, destroying the fishermen’s lives and nature.”
Fr. Perera, also cited Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato sì about protecting the environment and its creatures: “Our beloved Pope has already warned against the destruction of the world’s nature. When we see injustice, our task is not only to speak out against it. We need to speak like Jesus. It is our prophetic role.”
He added: “When we talk about spiritual development, we must act to improve the conditions of our people.”
Among other Sri Lankan religious campaigning against the ongoing project is Fr. Sarath Iddamalgoda, who was ordained a half-century ago and is now based in Kelaniya, a suburb of Colombo in the Western Province of Sri Lanka.
Fr. Iddamalgoda notes that the massive Chinese project requires considerable amounts of granite and sand. The rural quarries required dry up underground water resources, which are needed for survival of all life. Blasting rocks has already damaged houses and endangered the health of inhabitants and animals.
Plant and animal species are disappearing due to the destruction caused by the quarries. The damage is expected to be aggravated when the demand for granite to build the port city increases.
Yet despite these issue, of the estimated 1.6 million Sri Lankan Catholics, just over 6 per cent of the total population, some have not joined in the protests.
Indeed, Woods even claims that “some of the most senior figures in the Catholic hierarchy have been accused of accepting Chinese bribes in exchange for their non-opposition to the Port City project.”
At the height of the controversy in 2015, the Church controversially accepted a donation from the China Harbour Engineering Corporation (CHEC), builders of the Colombo Port City, to renovate the Basilica of Our Lady of Lanka in Tewatte, a distant suburb of Colombo.
A site of pilgrimage for Sri Lankan Catholics, the church houses the venerated statue of Our Lady of Lanka. It was completed in 1974, a year after Pope Paul VI endowed the church with the title of Minor Basilica.
The national shrine of Sri Lanka was in need of repair, but protestors asked Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, whether the Chinese might have had ulterior motives in this unexpected donation.
In a letter to Cardinal Ranjith, they inquired why China was suddenly so concerned about the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka when in China itself, repressive measures were being taken against Christian communities: “In Sri Lanka the Chinese government is spending millions of rupees to repair a leaking roof, while back in China it has ordered the removal of crosses from Churches’ roofs.”
Whether this controversy represents a major fissure in the Church in Sri Lanka, as Woods alleges, the fact remains that the divide and rule approach was implied by Cardinal Ranjith himself after a 2021 audience with Pope Francis.
The occasion was to commemorate the loss of 269 people and several hundred wounded during the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka.
On 21 April, three churches in Sri Lanka and three luxury hotels in the commercial capital, Colombo, were targeted in a series of coordinated terrorist suicide attacks.
Cardinal Ranjith described the trauma to the local Catholic community, compounded by a lack of clarity or credible answers on assigning responsibility for the carnage.
Some observers deemed the bombings ISIS-related, but Cardinal Ranjith diagnosed their origin as politically inspired, with connections between certain [Sri Lankan] political groups and the bombers.
The Cardinal told Pope Francis: “There has been an attempt from some sectors to create inter-religious conflicts with us, and we have to be attentive to not let this succeed.”
Instead, in a display of unity, the delegation to the Vatican comprised Sri Lankan Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Protestants, as well as Catholics. This type of resolve effectively countered any putative divide and rule governmental approach. Rather than ceding to government pressure to create tension among Christians, Muslims and Buddhists, the Sri Lankan delegation resolved to “live in peace with everybody”.
Cardinal Ranjith reminded the media: “The Church is not under threat in Sri Lanka, but human rights are.”
This unity and solidarity will be needed in future years to cope with the ongoing human and ecological dangers posed by the Chinese project in Colombo.
(St. Sebastian’s Church, Negombo, Sri Lanka | Wikimedia commons)
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