Dear Augusto, Methinks you are barking up the wrong tree. It is not the DUTY of the Church to publicize the government schemes beneficial to its faithful, but if it does so that would be SERVICE. The Government does not routinely send its notifications to the churches. But it does send them to Panchayats whose DUTY it is to publicize them; but all they do, if at all, is to paste them on their Notice Board which, unfortunately, nobody reads. However, whenever the Government or the Panchayat sends a notice to the church with a request to read the same at the Mass, the priests do comply. This is not to say that discrimination against Kunbis does not exist in the Church; it does exist even in the Seminary (Rachol). And I can cite two recent instances in this context. A boy from a neighbouring ward (grandson of Kumbiabhat) was determined to become a priest. But, for whatever reason, he was expelled from the Seminary. He joined an Order, but was hounded out from there as well. He tried several Orders with the same result. His brother had committed suicide, and I do not know whether this was held against him. But, finally, he did succeed with an Order that does not have representation in Goa. However, he was refused Ordination at his own parish church (Velim). Even our Archbishop having declined, the Ordination Ceremony was performed at Old Goa by the Bishop of Bangalore! At that time, he did relate his tribulations on the way to the Altar. This happened two years ago. Once I enquired (telephonically) about this case from a priest friend at the Seminary, a Bamon. What he said is instructive; his opinion was that "they" are uncouth, "they" lack in manners and hence not suitable for priesthood. The second case is from Raia and was reported by Marcos Gonsalves in Gulab Konkani monthly about a year ago. This boy was persecuted so systematically that a complaint would reach every Seminary that he joined, within months! Thus thwarted, he was driven to suicide. But friends and relatives managed to dissuade him from taking such a drastic step, and he went to work in the Gulf. So, it would be wrong to say that Church discrimination against the Gawdas happened in the past; it does continue to this day! Sebastian Borges On 21 Aug 2013 augusto pinto <pinto...@gmail.com> wrote: Dear Sebastian I repeat what I said elsewhere that I believe that Adv Joao is at least partly motivated by the fact that Christian Gawda pride can get its best support from the Govt. and not from the Church through the instrument of Reservations for Scheduled Tribes - a reservation which cuts across religious grounds. I also believe that the Church has not sufficiently publicized the Govt. schemes so that the Gawdas can avail of these. I understand that this is sheer cussedness on their part. However I also concur with what Adv. Joao says regarding the systematic way in which the Church has discriminated against the Gawdas. This is a shame against the Catholic community. While this has happened in the past what I am indignant about now is the 'spiral of silence' that has greeted the publication of Adv John's essay. It seems that instead of addressing the injustices that Gawdas face socially economically and politically, their voice when not deliberately suppressed, is simply ignored by not just the Church clergy but also the more affluent of its members Augusto -------------- Sebastian Borges