«Jews, Christians and Hindus were burnt at stake in Goa in India».

The tiny state of India was the centre of the most cruel inquisition on planet Earth. This is the words of the historian and author Gunnar W. Knutsen. He recently translated an eyewitness account from 1687».

Gunnar W. Knutsen took his master on the Spanish Inquisition, and is today employed as an Historian at The University of Oslo. He was written several books and articles on the different tribunals of the Inquisition. In the Norwegian version of the «The Inquisition of Goa» Knutsen also explains from his own conclusions, made by the research and studies of the tribunal in Goa.

«The Spanish Inquisition did create fear in Europe. But few, if none, are aware of the fact that the most grotesque religious tyranny took place in Asia. For 252 year, the Portuguese enclave of Goa was ruled by a tribunal, which by the present age was look up on as a state of terror».

India was fare away from Europe, and the Portuguese authorities and the Roman Catholic Church had freer hands than on their home turfs. The Religious tyranny lasted for almost 252 years. The archive files of the religious tribunal has disappeared, and no-one knows for sure the number of people executed.

«But we know from other sources, that there were more than 16.000 trials in Old Goa. Even without access to the missing achieves, we can acknowledge that al least 500 people lost their lives», Mr. Knutsen explains.

«The Tribunal in Goa got the authority to arrest and transport to Goa people from all the Portuguese colonies on the East Coast of Africa, West cost of India, Sri Lanka, The spice Island of Indonesia and Portuguese China. The Portuguese Inquisition was in fact a global system of justice with authority over all sea vessels under control of the King of Portugal, wherever on the planet they were located» says Knutsen.

It was the fight against «Maranos», or crypto-Jews who was the official ideology behind the tribunal of the Inquisition in Goa.

The crypto-Jews was the name of Jews who officially has converted to Catholicism, but still celebrated Jewish traditions and the Sabbath in secret.

When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1948, many of them chose to flee to the newly discovered colonies.

In the year 1557, the Jesuit Goncalo Da Silva from the Indian city of Cochin wrote, that Judaism was a «perversisismo», the secret enemy which needed to be defeated with an Inquisitional tribunal in Goa. But also the Pre-Portuguese St. Thomas Christians and the Hindus of Goa was persecuted and killed by the tribunal.

Source: The Norwegian Christian daily newspaper «Dagen».

My comment:

The Goans have never been told the full truth about the crime against humanity that took place inside their state during the Portuguese rule. The man they adore, venerate or worship as a saint, is basically the man that brought in the terror. Thats tragic.

Will the Roman Catholics in Goa ever be told the truth, so they can get a chance to repent?