Wrong for religious body to make statement: Goa minister on Archbishop's CAA remark

Responding to Archbishop of Goa Filipe Neri Ferrao's strongly-worded statement against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Goa Transport minister Mauvin Godinho on Sunday said that it is wrong for a religious body to issue a statement that creates a communal divide.

"It is wrong for any religious body to issue a statement that creates a communal divide," said Godinho.

Archbishop of Goa Filipe Neri Ferrao, on behalf of the Catholic community of the state, released a strongly-worded statement on Saturday appealing to the Centre to "immediately and unconditionally revoke the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and desist from implementing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the National Population Register".

In the statement, the Goa Archbishop stated "The very fact that CAA uses religion, goes against the secular fabric of the country. It goes against the spirit and heritage of our land which, since times immemorial, has been a welcoming home to all; founded on the belief that the whole world is one big family."

"The CAA, the NRC, and the NPR are divisive and discriminatory and will certainly have a negative and damaging effect on a multicultural democracy like ours," the document read.