Six killed in Orissa religious riots, Vatican condemns

"People are totally harassed, driven away from their homes, beaten up and institutions destroyed," Archbishop Vincent Concessao of Delhi told a press conference.

India's constitution is secular, but most of its billion-plus citizens are Hindu. About 2.5 percent of Indians are Christians.

The remote and forested Kandhamal region is rife with religious tension. Hardline Hindus accuse Christian priests of bribing poor tribes and low-caste Hindus to change their faith.

Christian groups say lower-caste Hindus who convert do so willingly to escape the highly stratified and oppressive Hindu caste system.

There have been attacks on Christians in Orissa and other parts of India in previous years. In 1999, a Hindu mob killed Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children by burning them in their car in Orissa.

Christians in eastern India have condemned this week's killing of the Hindu leader.

Police blamed the killings on local Maoist rebels taking sides in a controversy over religious conversions, but Hindus say Christians were to blame.

Police say by attacking Hindus the Maoists were trying to win support among the region's poor tribes, most of whom had converted to Christianity.

(Additional reporting by Melanie Lee in New Delhi and Philip Pullella in Vatican City)