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“You have goodness and blessings on one hand, and evil and curses on the other. The choice is yours,” Bishop Franco Mulakkal warned me. I had just told him that I needed to leave on the second day of his four-day retreat because of a family emergency.
“How can you be sure that your family’s situation won’t get worse when you choose to leave a place God clearly led you to?” he asked. “You couldn’t have come to the retreat in the first place if God had not specifically called you here.”
This retreat that “god led me to” was, in fact, one I had joined for journalistic purposes. It was a four-day Vijayaradhana Dhyanam (Victory Adoration Retreat), led by Franco himself, at the Christeen Retreat Centre in Kerala's Kottayam. Like many Christian retreats, it was a residential programme combining prayer services and sermons, with participants expected to set aside their regular routines and remain for its duration. I attended as one of around 15 participants.
Franco is no ordinary retreat preacher. Once the Bishop of Jalandhar, he stepped down in 2023 and now holds the honorary title of Bishop Emeritus, accorded to retired bishops. Years earlier, he had been accused of raping a nun in a case that drew national attention, and triggered unprecedented protests within the Catholic Church in India. Though he was acquitted by the Kottayam Additional Sessions Court in January 2022, the complainant later challenged the acquittal before the Kerala High Court. More than two years on, the appeal is yet to be listed for hearing.
In the meantime, Franco has begun building a new ministry around the Christeen Retreat Centre. Alongside counselling services for women and children, he says he has held six editions of the four-day Vijayaradhana retreat over the past two years, including the one I attended. He now plans to hold it every month. Franco is assisted by a team of 43 volunteers, including several “brothers” who previously worked with prominent retreat preachers such as Fr Xavier Khan Vattayil and Fr Daniel Poovannathil.
When I tried to leave, I was passed from one member of the retreat team to another for some “convincing.” For almost an hour, they took turns telling me that I was acting against god’s will by leaving the retreat, while repeatedly reassuring me the “choice was entirely” mine. For 20 minutes of that one hour, Franco himself sat down with me. It took a colleague posing as my sister, who corroborated my story over the phone, for me to be finally allowed to leave.
In the 24 hours before that, I attended three lectures by Franco and a number of talks by other team members. By then, it had become clear that the retreat was about much more than prayer and worship. Running through every sermon and conversation was a particular telling of Franco’s own story. The years that brought him infamy were spoken of simply as a period of “suffering,” which, according to those around him, had deepened his faith, strengthened his ministry, and made him uniquely placed to guide the faithful.
Around that narrative, Franco is building a new ministry — one that borrows from familiar Charismatic Christian traditions while steadily cultivating its own community of volunteers and followers.
According to Thankachan, a member of the retreat team, Vijayaradhana was born out of “the Bishop’s conversations with Jesus during the period of suffering in his life.” “He used to spend 15–16 hours every day in this chapel during that time,” Thankachan said.
Neither Thankachan, nor anyone else at the retreat, will name the ‘suffering’ — being on trial for the crime of rape.
As I prepared to leave, another retreat member, Sunil, told me, “I know you might have some reservations about the retreat because of what the Bishop had to go through in the past. Don’t look at the individual, just think of the opportunity to worship the holy eucharist.”
Quoting the Bible to me, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” Sunil said Franco’s ‘suffering’ had strengthened his spiritual growth. “There is more grace in those who have been rejected and abandoned by the world,” he added.
In fact, throughout the retreat, Franco's past was presented as a reason for the faithful to place greater trust in him.
“Jesus appointed the apostles [Jesus’ disciples] as his successors. Who are the successors of the apostles? Bishops. They wield authority over heaven and earth. It is one such Bishop who is leading this retreat for us here. Is that a fortune many get to experience? No,” Thankachan said during the second talk of the retreat on July 16.
Thankachan also credited Franco’s ministry with extraordinary healings. Among the examples he shared on the retreat’s opening day was that of a man whose tumour, he claimed, disappeared within minutes of entering the chapel where Franco conducts services.
The sentiment was echoed by the attendees at the retreat as well.
I woke up around 5 am on July 17 hearing Sheela*, an attendee from Uzhavoor in Kottayam, tell another woman, “It is our great fortune that we get to attend a retreat led by a Bishop. Which other Bishop would do this?”
Later when I said I was leaving, two other attendees, Thresiamma* and Catherine*, urged me to stay with a similar appeal. “Don’t go,” they said. “This is a retreat led by a Bishop.”
Many of Franco’s teachings at the retreat, notably, rested on fear.
Even as he tried to convince me to stay for the entire duration of the retreat, Franco warned me that the “devil takes clever paths to prevent the worship of God.” My decision to leave, he suggested, could have consequences that extended beyond me, affecting generations to come.
This was a reference to one of the central teachings of the retreat.
In an hour-long session on day two, Franco had said, “You might have seen families that are unable to make a headway in life no matter what they do. It could be that they are being punished for some sins of their ancestors. They wouldn’t know that their parents or grandparents had committed such a sin, but they will continue to pay for it.” He also offered an exclusive solution for intergenerational curses in the form of a special service, only for Vijayaradhana attendees.
It’s notable that the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes sin as “a personal act,” implying that it cannot be inherited through generations.
When I asked Franco if he was saying god is vengeful, he quoted a slew of verses from the Old Testament, dismissing the need to consider the historical context in which those texts were written. He then finished with an example from the book of Exodus. “What was the tenth plague? God killed the firstborns of the Egyptians. Now you tell me, will God kill or not?”
Franco's sermons also occasionally reflected a deeply exclusivist understanding of faith.
One of his stories involved watching the kavadi attam, a devotional folk dance associated with Hinduism, with fascination as a child. Looking back, Franco said even this simple act of watching amounted to a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments ("I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me").
“Back then, I didn’t know it, but what I did was in sin,” he said.
Interestingly, Franco’s doctoral thesis was a “theological investigation into the moral teachings of Guru Nanak,” the first guru of Sikhism.
On another occasion at the retreat, he made a case against organ donation, especially concerned that the organ might go to a non-faithful. “Don’t tell anyone the Bishop told you this,” he said before adding, “Earlier, I used to think that I should donate my eyes, kidney, etc. But I have used this body of mine only to worship Jesus and I worry about one of my organs going to a non-Christian who would use it to worship another god. I can’t let that happen.”
The Catholic Church, however, considers organ donation an act of charity and encourages it when it is carried out ethically and with the donor's informed consent. It also does not restrict donation based on the recipient's religion. In Kerala, especially, there have been several widely reported instances of Catholic priests donating kidneys to people of other faiths.
Such elements of fear and religious exclusivism appear, in varying forms and degrees, in Charismatic retreat centres across the state.
Vijayaradhana closely follows the formats familiar to Kerala’s popular Charismatic retreats — from the praise-and-worship sessions that involve song and dance, to the stress on sin and guilt, especially through a dedicated session on the violations of the Ten Commandments, and testimonies and promises of miraculous healings. Even the attempts to persuade participants not to leave before the retreat ends are familiar to those who have attended similar programmes elsewhere.
Yet, even within that familiar format, the retreat's messaging was not always internally consistent.
In the first session, Franco said, "Jesus is the lamb of God who died for our sins, and so it is our duty to console him. How is it okay to submit a list of demands through prayer when you go to someone who needs consolation?" He urged participants to adore Jesus rather than seek favours through prayer.
The very next session, however, was a healing service led by Jose, a member of the retreat team, who invited participants with illnesses to pray for healing. Over the course of an hour, he declared people healed of ailments ranging from neck and joint pain to spinal problems, food allergies, diabetes, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
Besides, unlike the state’s better-known retreat centres that draw thousands of worshippers, Vijayaradhana remains a much smaller gathering. The poster advertising the retreat capped registrations at 50 participants, though only around 15 attended the edition I joined. A Protestant retreat being held simultaneously in another hall at the Christeen Retreat Centre drew around 200 participants on July 17.
Many of the attendees were already connected to the ministry Franco had built around the retreat. Some were returning participants, others were family members of regulars at the Christeen Retreat Centre, while Celine, one of Franco's team members, said she had personally brought five participants to the retreat, even paying the Rs 1,200 registration fee for one of them. Two nuns were also among the attendees.
The chapel where Vijayaradhana is held was renovated by Franco in 2024, as a plaque inside announces. He also promotes it aggressively, photographing and filming sessions on his phone throughout the retreat, with images and videos appearing on his Facebook page within the hour.
On July 19, the day the retreat concluded, I found myself added to a WhatsApp group called Bishop Franco Vijayaradhana Ministries. Franco sends worship videos to the group every day. It currently has 968 members.
One of the messages sent by Franco on July 23 referenced the controversies surrounding him. One invitation sent to the group began with the question, “Bishop Franco in controversy again?” before urging recipients to “come and experience” Vijayaradhana. It concluded: “Let us welcome criticism, turn insults into blessings, and turn allegations into opportunities.”
Weeks before the retreat, Franco wrote a lengthy Facebook post about the late Fr Benedict Onamkulam, a Catholic priest who was sentenced to death in the Madatharuvi murder case in 1966 before being acquitted by the Kerala High Court the following year.
Reports say that more than three decades later, Benedict told the Church-run newspaper Deepika that the family of the “real” killer had come to seek his forgiveness. The identity of that alleged killer has never been made public, and no official reinvestigation has been reported. Even so, Benedict came to be celebrated within sections of the Church. “Today, many people visit his tomb,” Franco wrote, attributing it to the priest’s long years of suffering.
Beyond the walls of his retreat, however, a very different reality persists.
The court appeal filed by the survivor, Sister Ranit, against Franco's acquittal has still not been listed for hearing. "The ones who committed the wrongs get to travel for higher studies, or become retreat gurus," she recently told Asianet. "But the sisters who speak up, in my experience, are isolated... I will not rest until I have got justice."
*Names changed to protect identity.
