Amid signs of changes and more religious inclusivity in the country, Church leaders in Bangladesh called for Easter Sunday to be a public holiday. Source: OSV News.
The United Church Council of Bangladesh, the Catholic bishops’ conference and Bangladesh’s Christian Association have separately demanded a public holiday from the interim government on Easter Sunday.
On October 17, Bangladesh’s United Church Council president, Dhaka Archbishop Bejoy Nicephorus D’Cruze, sent a letter to the chief adviser to the interim government.
After the student uprising in August that left hundreds of people dead, the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, stepped down and fled to India.
In his letter, Archbishop D’Cruze welcomed the interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus and said that Easter Sunday celebrates “the triumph of Lord Jesus Christ over sin and death” and is an important day for Christians.
“Unfortunately, the government has not given it a (status of) holiday, despite repeated appeals to the previous government,” Archbishop D’Cruze wrote.
“As a result, many Christians cannot observe Easter Sunday. As many government recruitment and academic examinations are held on this day, Christian examinees cannot observe the day of religious significance.”
According to the 2022 national census by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the Muslim-majority country has about 500,000 Christians out of about 180 million people, including 400,000 Catholics.
In mid-October, the list of public holidays was proposed by the interim government for the next calendar year, with Muslims having 12 days of public holidays for the two main religious celebrations and Hindus being granted three days for their main religious festival.
No mention of a public holiday matching the Christian calendar caused heavy criticism of the government on social media.
On behalf of the Bangladesh bishops’ conference, Rajshahi Bishop Gervas Rozario urged the government to observe the holy day for Christians.
“After our new government assumes office, we naturally expect that this most important religious festival of Christians will be treated as a public holiday,” his letter to the government said.
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Bangladeshi Christians want Easter to be a public holiday (By Stephan Uttom Rozario, OSV News)
