Last week, a beloved Kansas Catholic pastor, Fr. Arul Carasala, was shot dead in broad daylight outside his church in the small town of Seneca, two hours northwest of Kansas City. His tragic death – just weeks after Satanists attempted to exploit the Kansas state Capitol for a “Black Mass” – marked the 495th physical act of violence or vandalism against the Catholic church in America in the last five years.
Now, as Catholics celebrate Fr. Carasala’s life and mourn his death, it’s essential that leaders on both sides of the political spectrum learn from the tragedy of his loss and work together to ensure such anti-Catholic bigotry is permanently stopped.
Arul Carasala was born in a small village in eastern India to Catholic parents. Though Christians constitute just 6% of the population of the state in which he grew up, Catholics had built a church in the village more than two centuries prior, and generations of local Indians were raised in the faith. While attending a Catholic high school, Arul decided to enter the seminary. At age 27, he was ordained a priest, and began serving the Catholic minority in several small cities in India.
A chance encounter – or perhaps more accurately, a moment of providence – with Archbishop James Keleher of Kansas City led Fr. Carasalas to move to the United States to serve in remote towns in rural northeastern Kansas, the smallest of which has a population of 27. Though on the surface Fr. Carasalas might have seemed to have little in common with white Kansas farmers, his own hardy upbringing in India helped him to relate, and they embraced each other.
"He pretty well knew everyone around. He kind of made it a point to know you,” said parishioner Lyle Elekamp of Fr. Carasalas, who ministered in Kansas for over 20 years and became an American citizen. “He was a good ol' boy.”
The bond between the rural Kansans and the Indian priest will live on, but only in the spiritual sense now that an extremist’s bullet sent Fr. Carasala to his eternal home.
Police have arrested and charged a 66-year-old resident of Tulsa with first-degree murder. How he ended up 300 miles away from home and why he targeted Fr. Carasala is unclear.
Under normal circumstances, the slaying could be written off as a bizarre and tragic incident. But it is a gruesome addition to a list of over 490 acts of violence and vandalism against Catholic churches over the last five years.
Since the spring of 2020, Catholic parishes across the country have been victimized by destruction of statues and holy objects; desecration of the Eucharist; graffiti with anti-Catholic messages; rocks and bricks hurled through windows; disruptions of Mass; and arson causing damage or complete destruction. The incidents encompass 43 states, including 12 cases in Kansas.
While the shooter in the Kansas case appears to have been of a right-wing persuasion, the vast majority of the attacks are attributable to left-wing causes and anti-Catholic hatred. A large number of them were perpetrated by pro-abortion extremists in the months after the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. Another distinct strain was tied to BLM and anti-colonialist trends. Still more are overtly Satanic; and not included in the count is last month’s “black mass” at the Kansas state capitol, where a dozen self-proclaimed satanists destroyed holy objects before their ringleader was arrested for attacking a Christian.
The epidemic of violence was completely ignored by the Biden administration, which did not federally prosecute a single one of the attacks. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has not made any public statement on the murder of Fr. Carasala. But there is light on the horizon coming from Washington, D.C., where President Donald Trump recently pledged to look in to the problem of attacks against churches and the Department of Justice has signaled it is serious about combating anti-religious rhetoric and violence.
This should not be a partisan issue. Politicians and government officials across the spectrum should condemn and combat anti-Catholic violence as strongly as they do anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish violence. The DOJ should direct U.S. attorneys to aid investigation and prosecution of attacks against churches, which are illegal under federal law, and send a clear message to anti-Catholic individuals that these acts will no longer be tolerated. The Department of Homeland Security should appropriate security resources to protecting churches and other places of worship. State and local law enforcement should actively engage with bishops and pastors to prevent trouble and make arrests, since only about a quarter of perpetrators over the last five years have been charged.
The question is whether the murder of the Kansas priest was the culmination or final straw of the anti-Catholic violence over the last five years, or merely yet another entry into the log of attacks. Meanwhile, Fr. Carasalas’s parish was packed for a funeral this week, and his body will be returned to India for burial. As Catholics in Kansas and India alike mourn, they hope for action from Washington. And they also pray fervently that in losing a priest, they have also gained an intercessor in heaven.
Tommy Valentine is the Director of the Catholic Accountability Project at CatholicVote.