(UCA News) — In 1693, a Portuguese Jesuit named John de Britto was beheaded in southern India. The Tamils called him Arulanandar, meaning “a blissful person blessed by God’s grace,” but his crime was simpler than that: he had lived among the marginalized, adopted their customs, learnt their languages, and insisted they were fully human.

Three centuries might separate us from his death, but the questions his life raises for Indian Christianity have never been more urgent.

De Britto did not preach from a distance or build missions behind safe walls. He immersed himself in communities that the caste system had pushed to the absolute margins. This was not charity work or missionary tourism. It was genuine solidarity with people that society had deemed untouchable.

De Britto believed the Gospel belonged first to those who suffered most, and when he challenged the social hierarchies that caused that suffering, he paid with his life.

The pattern did not end in 1693.

On a January night in 1999, Graham Staines and his two young sons, Philip and Timothy, were burnt alive while they slept in their station wagon in Manoharpur, Odisha.

Staines, an Australian missionary, had spent years caring for leprosy patients and others abandoned. He touched people whose families refused to care for them. He was not seeking converts. He was seeking the forgotten. His sons were ten and six years old.

History will remember their compassion. India must never........

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