Sister Lucy Kalapura spoke out against a bishop accused of rape. Then the Catholic Church expelled her … for driving, they said. Every time Sister Lucy Kalapura attempts to start her “automatic” Maruti Suzuki, it screeches to a halt. Wry amusement covers her face as she pulls out the key — the face of Jesus Christ dangles from the keychain — and gets out of the driver’s seat. “To think the car would give up on me when I have to fight the toughest fight of my life because of it. Funny, right?” quips the 53-year-old nun from the Franciscan Clarist Congregation of the Catholic Church of Kerala. A year after Kalapura rose to prominence as one of the main faces of the protests by nuns in India demanding the arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal — he is accused of raping a nun from the Punjab-based Missionaries of Jesus — her congregation dismissed her for “learning to drive a car, taking a loan to buy a car and publishing a collection of poems,” according to a letter it sent her. |