A candlelight protest in Calcutta on Wednesday against the Orissa killings. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Christian educational institutions that did not suspend classes even after the 1999 murder of Graham Staines and his sons will for the first time sacrifice a working day on Friday to protest the killing of an Orissa missionary school employee.

“We are concerned over the way Christians are being attacked in Orissa. All the founder bodies of over 700 Christian schools operating in Calcutta and the rest of Bengal have decided to keep their institutions closed on Friday to mourn the incident,” said Faustine Brank, the president of the education cell of the Bangiya Christiya Pariseba.

St Xavier’s, Loreto, La Martiniere, St Lawrence, Don Bosco, Pratt Memorial, St James and St Thomas have all agreed to be part of the protest.

For parents who were worried about their children being stranded on the way back home because of Mamata Banerjee’s Singur-related road blockade that day, the school shutdown may have actually come as a relief.

Christians will also come out in a procession from various parts of the city and assemble in front of Utkal Bhawan, near Subodh Mullick Square, for a solidarity rally. Church representatives will then hand a memorandum to the resident commissioner at Utkal Bhawan, seeking security for Christians and other minority communities in Orissa. An all-religion prayer has been planned, too.

“A delegation of representatives of schools controlled by the Calcutta diocese of the Church of North India will later meet the governor,” said Terence Ireland, the principal of St James School.

The incident in Orissa has come almost a decade after religious zealots attacked Staines, an Australian missionary working in that state, and his two minor sons while they were asleep in their jeep. All three were burnt to death.

On Monday night, suspected Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists set fire to the hostel of a missionary school in Bargarh district of western Orissa, killing a Christian woman employee and leaving a priest critically injured.

“We have come to know from media reports that the school was attacked in retaliation for the murder of a VHP leader. We condemn the killing of the VHP leader. But we are noticing that a section of people is trying to create communal tension,” said Herod Mullick, the general secretary of the organisation of churches.