Alan de Lastic; Archbishop of Delhi, Defender of India’s Catholic Minority

Alan de Lastic, 70, Roman Catholic archbishop of Delhi and India’s most prominent Christian leader. De Lastic was president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and the most vocal defender of the nation’s Roman Catholic minority, which has been under attack by Hindu militants. The archbishop demanded vigorous prosecution of the attackers who last year raped a nun and killed a missionary and his sons. Christians have been in India for almost 2,000 years and make up about 2.5% of the nation’s nearly 1 billion people, the majority of whom are Hindu. In recent years militant Hindu nationalist groups began a campaign to discourage conversions to Christianity. When Pope John Paul II visited India last November, the Hindu nationalists demanded a papal apology for what they described as a coordinated effort by foreign missionaries to force thousands of Hindus to embrace Christianity. De Lastic gave short shrift to the demands, arguing that conversion “is something that happens in the mind and in the heart” and cannot be forced. On Tuesday in a car crash in Poland, where he had been touring after a working visit to Rome.