Intolerance holding sway over our lives: Goa archbishop

There is an increasing intolerance holding sway over our lives today, Goa's top Catholic leader said on Thursday.

"Sadly we find an increasing dose of intolerance holding sway over our lives. Not only people of different creeds and cultures, but people from the same family drift away from each other because of this intolerance and unforgivingness," Archbishop Filip Neri Ferrao said in his annual Christmas message.

Ferrao is the religious leader of Goa's Catholics, who account for more than 26 per cent of the state's 1.5 million population.

"...let us pray for all families as well as for various social and religious communities. Let there be more understanding, more mercy, more reconciliation and peace," the Catholic religious leader said.

Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said the state's people were living in communal harmony.