{"id":15574,"date":"2017-06-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2017\/06\/18\/india-court-affirms-christian-priests-right-to-property-despite-poverty-oath\/"},"modified":"2017-06-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-18T12:00:00","slug":"india-court-affirms-christian-priests-right-to-property-despite-poverty-oath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2017\/06\/18\/india-court-affirms-christian-priests-right-to-property-despite-poverty-oath\/","title":{"rendered":"India Court Affirms Christian Priests&#8217; Right to Property Despite Poverty Oath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/religionnews.com\/2017\/06\/16\/india-court-affirms-priests-right-to-property-despite-poverty-oath\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>KOCHI, INDIA, June 16, 2016 (Religion News Service): A high court in southern India has ruled that Christian priests and nuns are entitled to their right to property despite their vows of poverty, signaling an end to a centuries-old tradition that has left many in the clergy destitute. In its order last week in favor of a priest whose relatives cut him out of his share of ancestral property, the court in Kerala state said a priest can give up his property if he wishes to, but there can be no &#8220;automatic deprivation&#8221; because he is in a religious order and has &#8220;renounced worldly pleasures.&#8221; The ruling applies to all religions in the state, and to women in a religious order as well.<\/p>\n<p>The high court, which overturned a lower court&#8217;s ruling against the priest, placed the Indian Succession Act &#8212; which guarantees all citizens equal inheritance rights &#8212; above canon law, which requires the surrender of any inheritance to the church, said Sabu George, a lawyer for the priest. The Catholic priests&#8217; association has long demanded a state pension and compensation from the church for retired priests and those who leave the clergy. They are often forced to live on a small stipend or depend on the largesse of the parish. A spokesman for the Catholic church in the state said they were disappointed with the ruling, and may appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source KOCHI, INDIA, June 16, 2016 (Religion News Service): A high court in southern India has ruled that Christian priests,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}