Panaji, Dec 3 (IANS): The demonetisation move has been causing immense hardship to poor people, especially in rural areas, Secretary General of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of India Theodore Mascarenhas said on Saturday.

"About demonetisation, you should ask the government what it thinks about it, but as we see for the moment, it is creating a lot of problems for the poor people, especially in villages" Mascarenhas said.

"I have visited Jharkhand villages where money is not reaching to the people. What will be the long term effects, what will be the short term effects we don't know, but it is causing hardships," he said.

The secretary general is in Goa to participate in the feast of St. Francis Xavier, the state's patron saint. 

Nearly 26 per cent of the state's population are Christians.

He also said, that Christians would defend their constitutional rights as far as freedom for education for the minority community is concerned.

"Now as I said, the Christian community is not communal and the gospel will not allow us to be communal. We belong to everybody because God belongs to everybody," he said. 

"We have certain rights in the constitution and those constitutional rights are to be protected. We will not allow anyone to touch those rights. And that is a right to education, we are free to educate in any language we want. We are free to teach what we want as long as it is not against the nation," he added.