– Saritha Rai writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

It is dawn in Kerala, a palm frond of a state in India’s South West. As the sun’s first rays hit the church steeple, a Holy Mass is being conducted in the local Malayalam language.

Only, the prayer is dedicated to a newborn by his Catholic family half a world away in the United States.

Requests for these so-called Mass Intentions, or prayers offered for a specific reason, pour into India from the United States, Canada and Europe, where there is a huge shortage of priests.

This outsourcing to faraway India is a quaint practice that has been called “religious outsourcing.”

But now, the severe global economic crisis and bankruptcies in Western churches are hitting even this unusual practice. In Kerala and other parts of India, where the Roman Catholic Church still thrives, outsourced mass intentions are dwindling and striking the income of poorer priests and impoverished churches.

Sebastian Adayanthrath, bishop of Kerala’s Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, one of the oldest in the country, said he is observing a big slowdown in incoming requests for mass intentions from the West.

“There is a 50 percent fall recently in outsourced mass intentions,” Adayanthrath told GlobalPost in a telephone interview.

Church bankruptcies, diminishing Sunday collections and falling donations from the faithful in Western parishes are all reasons, Adayanthrath said.

Outsourcing, a practice where tasks are sent to cheaper, more efficient locations, has been a sore point for Westerners especially in these economically depressed times.

For the last decade, India has particularly benefitted from the outsourcing of a multitude of tasks such as writing software code, providing customer service, reading x-rays and filing tax returns.

With religious outsourcing, Westerners request Indian churches to hold Holy Mass in memory of a dead family member, or thanksgiving for a child’s college admission, to celebrate a wedding anniversary or even for unusual causes such as the well-being of their favorite sports stars.

“Each mass is paid a stipend of $5 (250 rupees) upwards, supplementing the income of priests who are otherwise paid 50 rupees for the same service by locals,” said Rector Father Augustine Thottakara of Bangalore-based seminary Dharmaram College.

About two percent of India’s 1.2 billion population is Christian, mostly of the Roman Catholic faith. Kerala in Southern India has a big concentration of churches and the faithful.

The requests come to the churches and the local clergy through the Vatican, through clergymen in overseas churches and even through religious bodies. In these days of digital communication, requests have speeded up through email.

Western labor unions have criticized such outsourcing as commoditizing spirituality.

The Indian church stoutly defends the practice. “Offering mass intentions on behalf of Westerners are not a business, it is a custom that benefits both sides,” said Father Paul Thelakkat, spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala’s Cochin town.

But the eastward flow of prayers has ebbed somewhat recently, following the graph of the worldwide economic state.

Where thousands of prayers were flooding parishes in Kerala, church leaders say that they are unable to get or route Western prayers and stipend to cash-strapped parishes and needy priests.

The trends in Kerala mirror what is happening in churches elsewhere in India.

The drop in religious outsourcing is hurting those like Father Bosco Puthoor, rector at the St. Joseph’s Pontifical Seminary in Aluva near Cochin.

Father Puthoor earns 2,500 rupees ($50) as a monthly salary and supplements his own income, as well as that of 22 other teaching priests in his seminary, through religious outsourcing.

“It is a pity that this practice of mutual support between the East and the West is declining,” Father Bosco said.

More from GlobalPost:

India’s unfriendly skies

The Ugly Indian

The Mormons in India

– Sonya Fatah writes for the GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. –

Their voices rang out, echoing in the nearby passageway. “Count your many blessings,” they sang. “Name them one by one. Count your many blessings. See what God hath done.” And so, the women, some 25 of them, members of the Sisters Committee at one of the six churches of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in New Delhi, closed their Sunday post-service meeting.

“Let us all work together so we can have a temple here,” urged the chair of the meeting, eliciting head nods and verbal assents all round.

There are almost 7,500 Mormons in India, according to the LDS Church, one of the most organized religious bodies in the world. Like all religious groups keen on increasing their numbers, the church is now looking eastward, toward India to share Joseph Smith’s message.

On numbers alone, conversion in India hasn’t happened as quickly as in Latin America, but that isn’t holding back the missionary fervor of those who have already embraced the church’s teachings. Ever since elders from the Quorum of the Twelve, while visiting Bangalore in 1992, announced a “prophecy” that New Delhi would have a temple, serious efforts are underway to get there.

Anuradha Yadav, 24, is one new Mormon who is dedicated to seeing a temple in New Delhi. Born into a traditional Hindu family of the Yadav caste, Anuradha recalls questioning her faith early on, when she was 14 years old.

“I kept asking questions, and I started visiting churches. In all I visited 30 churches.” One year of church shopping later, Anuradha was even more confused. Then in 2006 she bumped into two young elders on the street who shared the Book of Mormon with her.

She read it cover to cover and felt renewed. “I knelt down and prayed. That was such a wonderful moment. I felt as if somebody had just made me calm,” she said, tearing up at the memory.

Two of the women in the front row at the Sister’s Committee meeting were from Anuradha’s family: her mother, Saraswati, and her sister-in-law, Hema. Dressed traditionally in a blue sari, her hair tied up in a neat bun with a bindi on her forehead, Saraswati came to the church after she saw a miraculous change in her daughter.

“The church changed Anuradha and taught her so much patience and kindness. I was attracted to Christianity myself as a child because I had a Christian friend and I always wanted to go to church with her but my father never let me.”

Most of the people gathered here were either recent converts or those interested in joining the church. Of the five elders in the room, two were young Americans on the 18-month mission that is part of every young Mormon’s coming of age in the church.

Elder Dyck, 20, from Sacramento, Calif., had just completed the first year of his mission. “We speak a lot to people on the road as we’re walking around our delegated areas. It’s hard here to attract people,” he admitted, “but the positives really outweigh the negatives.”

To Indian converts, one of Mormonism’s greatest attractions is the existence of the living prophet. “We have a living prophet who is leading and guiding us right now,” an Indian elder told the Bible Study group.

Like Elder Dyck, Anuradha, also went on a conversion mission to Andhra Pradesh in the country’s south, where Mormons have had the most success in attracting Indians. “My father was not happy that I was going away for 18 months but I went anyway.” Once dismissive of idol worship and reincarnation, Anuradha employed patience and understanding in reaching out to others instead of mocking her birth religion.

Over the course of that mission, Anuradha converted 30 people. Outside her mission, she’s converted at least 10 other people, including her mother, two brothers, a sister, a sister-in-law and three close friends. For her, as for many of those who attend church at the several New Delhi missions, Mormonism is a no-brainer.

“I learned how to be a good daughter, a good sister, to respect everyone and be kind to everyone,” Anuradha said. “I really know that this is the true gospel of Jesus Christ and my life really has changed.”

More from Global Post:

Ford bets on India

India’s Monsoon economy

Identity issues in India

A Roman Catholic nun who left her convent in India after 33 years of service has penned an unflattering picture of life within the cloistered walls in a book that may further embarrass the Church.

In "Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun", published in India in English this month, Sister Jesme tells of sexual relations between some priests and nuns, homosexuality in the convent and discrimination and corruption in Catholic institutions...

"Amen" grabbed media headlines in February, when it was first published in Malayalam -- the regional language of Kerala. With the new English edition and offers of a film based on the book, Sister Jesme's plea for a reformation of the Church is now set to reach a wider audience.

Read our feature here.

Goa, long a magnet for partying hippies, penurious college students and planeloads of foreign pensioners, now wants only “upmarket and responsible family tourists”, the Economic Times has quoted the state church as saying.

In a bid to restore some of the shine lost in the Scarlett Keeling case, the Goa church, which apparently plays a key role in the state’s politics, now wants to focus on family tourists who won’t bring further disrepute to the state that has had its name tarnished not just by the media glare on the booze and drug parties on its famous beaches, but also by violent protests against industrial development.

A family-focussed tourism policy will help attract more “upmarket, high spending” tourists, whose shorter visits will contribute more to the state, the Centre for Responsible Tourism was quoted as saying.

And just how will they ensure that a) you are upmarket and b) you are family? Will tourists now be required to carry bank and credit card statements alongwith their sunscreen and shades? Perhaps marriage certificates, as well, packed between the t-shirts?

Well done, Goa, for showing we’ve come a long way since clubs and restaurants barred entry to Indians and dogs.

Ironically, the government and corporates have, in recent years, encouraged middle-class Indians to travel more, with sops in the form of discount airlines and budget hotels. 

They have even made noises about the fortune waiting to be tapped at the bottom of the pyramid. That is all just talk, apparently.

But Goa - which launched a cheerful ad campaign recently urging everyone to “go Goa” - is not alone.

Years ago, when a fancy mall opened in south Mumbai, entry was restricted to those with credit cards. The mall defended its action on the grounds that hordes of gawkers were getting in the way of “genuine” shoppers. Newspapers raised a stink and the practice died a quiet death, much like the mall itself, eventually.

More recently, a leading newspaper did a random survey of some of Mumbai’s top restaurants and bars to check their bias for foreigners. The conclusion: most of them preferred foreigners because they believed they spent more money, tipped more generously and behaved better than Indians.

And apartment complexes blatantly ban single people, people with dogs, people who eat meat and people of different religious convictions from renting in their buildings.

There’s no holding back the glee when an Indian company buys yet another British firm, no mitigating the indignation when a British TV show contestant is accused of racist comments against an Indian.

Sadly, there’s not a whimper when it comes to our own biases, it seems.