86 Court Cases at One Cathedral: Pakistan’s Churches Fight to Hold On to Their Property

• Lahore’s Cathedral Church of the Resurrection is fighting 86 property-related court cases
• Multan Diocese filed 15 cases in a single month
• A former pastor allegedly used forged signatures to sell 2,276 square metres of church land
• Campaigners want a complete ban on the sale of Christian communal property

Churches in Pakistan are battling on many fronts to keep their land and buildings, UCA News reported on September 24, 2021, in a report by Kamran Chaudhry from Lahore.

The Cathedral Church of the Resurrection in Lahore had 86 property-related cases pending, and the Multan Diocese had filed 15 cases in the previous month alone. The Church of Pakistan, formed in 1970 when four denominations united, was set up partly to recover church properties. The Lahore Development Authority had bulldozed more than 8,000 square metres of Catholic Church land at the Gosh e Aman missionary institute.

Bishop Paul described how a former pastor, Ashir Kamran, used forged signatures to try to sell 2,276 square metres of church land in Multan in 2007. Officials stopped the deal, but Kamran “is still at large”. The bishop said: “The government officials are in cahoots with individuals and groups who blatantly make use of government monograms on fake documents.”

A proposed amendment to the Protection of Communal Properties of Minorities Act would move authority over such property to the Federal Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony. Albert David, a member of the National Commission for Minorities, went further: “There should be a complete ban on any sale of Christian or any communal properties.”

Pakistan’s churches face pressures Jamaican churches do not, but the mechanics of loss are similar everywhere: forged documents, insiders who sell what is not theirs, and officials who look the other way. Jamaican congregations can reduce the risk by keeping titles registered in the name of the proper trustees, requiring more than one signature for any land transaction and checking the land register regularly for unexpected dealings.

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