India restores foreign funds permit of Mother Teresa’s charity

New Delhi, Jan 8 (EFE).- India on Saturday restored Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity’s permit to receive foreign funds, two weeks after it was put on hold.

The permit that allows the Catholic religious order set up by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate to receive international donations for its operations had been “not approved” two weeks ago after the philanthropic organization’s application to renew its license was refused due to inconsistencies in the documents presented, according to the ministry of home affairs.

However, the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration of the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) was restored on Saturday, according to the FCRA website.

So far neither the Indian authorities nor the Catholic congregation have commented on the matter.

Opposition Trinamool Party’s member of parliament, Derek O’Brien, who had criticized the cancellation of the license, celebrated the restoration of the permit, which, according to him, had been revoked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration due to political reasons.

“The FCRA registration for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity is back…The POWER OF LOVE is stronger than the power of 56 inch,” he said Saturday on Twitter, referring to the Indian prime minister.

The Missionaries of Charity license was suspended on Dec. 25 for “not meeting the eligibility conditions,” the ministry said in a statement over a week ago.

The ministry said that while considering the MoC’s renewal application, “some adverse inputs were noticed,” which led to the application being rejected.

The incident sparked a wave of criticism from activists and opponents who slammed it as an attack on religious minorities in the country.

Immediately after the ministry’s refusal to renew its foreign funds license, the Missionaries of Charity decided to stop operations in its foreign accounts until the situation was clarified.

A MoC spokesperson told EFE that the decision to stop all transactions had been made by the organization and not by the government, and that they were working to resolve the impasse.

The traditional religious order, in which the nuns wear the Indian traditional dress sari, currently has 4,500 missionaries in over 130 countries, and mainly works to help leprosy patients, orphans, prostitutes and refugees.

In the last week, more than 12,000 non-profits, including charities, humanitarian and medical institutions, have lost their foreign fund permit in India.

These include the humanitarian organization OXFAM, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the Indian Institute of Public Administration and the Indian Medical Association (IMA), according to the FCRA website. EFE

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