Catholics lose contract for leprosy hospital

Catholics lose contract for leprosy hospital

AHMEDABAD, Gujarat, India — The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party government of India’s Gujarat state has declined to renew its contract with the Catholic administrators of a leprosy hospital in Ahmedabad on the grounds that the nuns were “preaching Christianity.”

On April 1, officials asked the six sisters of the Salesian Missionaries of Mary Immaculate to vacate their residential quarters in the Ave Maria Convent, located on the hospital grounds. The state health commissioner told one of the nuns he could do nothing about the contract revocation because it was a political order.