Ranchi, Feb. 26: Brushing aside charges of ?forced conversions?, Cardinal Telesphore P. Toppo today inaugurated a church at Jonha stressing that he had fulfilled a promise made in 1984 to gift a church to the people.

The cardinal, who also inaugurated an adjacent building, to be used as residence for priests, was flanked by leader of Opposition Sudhir Mahto and the Bishop of Gent, Belgium, Luc Van Looy.

The triangular Jonha church with a round altar stands out amid the small hamlet of Jonha, famous for its cascading waterfall where the Subernarekha plunges down from the highlands to the plains.

Designed by a Jesuit priest, Joseph Stivens, the architect of the Archbishop House in Ranchi, the modern church replaces a makeshift mud church constructed in 1931.

In December last year, the temporary church at Jonha, about 45 km from the state capital, had shot into fame after the Central Sarna Samiti and others burned effigies of the cardinal alleging that the church had carried out large-scale conversions at Jonha, Muri and Silli.

However, Cardinal Toppo refuted the charges stressing that the Roman Catholic Church has always been opposed to forced conversions by fraud and allurement and stressed that there has not been a single case of forced conversion by the Roman Catholic Church anywhere in the state.

?When I was transferred from Dumka as Archbishop of Ranchi in December 1984, on my way, I found a community carrying a Cross and waving it at every passing vehicle. I asked the driver of the car to stop. The people washed my feet. I was moved and then, I had made a secret promise to myself that I would gift a church at Jonha,? he recalled.