ICC Note:
Christians across India cam together this weekend to pray for the safety and health of Father Tom Uzhullalil, a Christian priest captured by Islamic radicals in Yemen in March 2016. Fr. Uzhullalil helped run a home for the elderly and sick in Aden, Yemen when it was attacked by Islamic radicals thought to be connected with ISIS. For months, nothing was heard from the missing priest, but in December 2016 a video was posted to the internet showing Fr. Uzhullalil. In the video, the priest begged to be released and called on the Indian government to get into contact with his captors. Will this prayer service help secure Fr. Uzhullalil’s safe release? 
01/23/2017 India (Asia News) – This weekend the Indian Church held a Day of Prayer for the release of Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil, the 55 year-old Salesian missionary from Kerala, kidnapped in Yemen last March.
The initiative was also joined Christian personalities of the country, such as the Reverend Thomas Jacob, of St. Stephen’s Church (Church of North India, CNI) in Bandra, in the State of Maharashtra. According to the motto “that they all may be one” [John 17: 21], the local Protestant community united with Catholics accepting the invitation to the prayer of the bishops.
“We prayed that Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil may soon be free and safe,” Rev. Thomas Jacob stressed to Asia News. “May God grant him health, we pray,” added the Protestant leader. “We also pray for his captors, for a change of their hearts and their transformation.”
After months of silence, at the end of December a video was posted online showing Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil, the Salesian Indian kidnapped by an extremist commando attributable to the Islamic State (IS) in early March in southern Yemen. In the video posted online, the clergyman states his name and said, “I may need hospitalization soon.”
Reading from a prepared text, he warns that his captors have tried several times to contact the Indian government, the president and the prime minister but “in vain” and that “nothing was done” for his release.
For the past ten months, Fr Tom Uzhunnalil has been in the hands of the Jihadi group, likely linked to IS, that stormed a home for the sick and elderly run by the Missionaries of Charity in Aden, in southern Yemen. In the attack, four sisters of Mother Teresa and 12 other people were killed.
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