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There is a strong tradition of altar boys in India within the Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI made a point of meeting with them when he visited India (1964). One Indian source writes, " The altar server occupies a privileged place in all liturgical celebrations. As Pope St. John Paul II told the altar servers some years ago, in the liturgy, they are 'much more than simple helpers of the parish priest.' They are ''servers of Jesus Christ, of the eternal High Priest.'' They are, in a special way, the young friends of Jesus." Many churches in India celebrate altar boy day. In recent years we have begun to see references to Alter Servers rather than altar boys. This is because a few churches now have altar girls. This is a change much more prevalent in Weestern churches. As far as we can tell the traditioin of altar boys continues to be the tractive in most Catholic churches. We notice an Alter Service camp (2016) organized as by the Salesian Society in Chennai Province. In India usually the altar boys serve in bare feet both in eastern rites and in the Roman rites. Sometime the altar boys are barefoot also in outdoor activities.
Often all the people in the church are barefoot. In India usually this is the norm in the holy places of all religions which of couese was the convention followed millenia before Christiznity arrived in India. Some scholars of phenomenology of the religion think that in some traditions this element could come from an ritual nudity. WEE see bare feet commonly ibn other relhgious observtion in India. Now the nudity is practiced only by some groups of Hindu and Jain monks. In some religions the bare feet were introduced directly from other traditions. This is the case of Judaism in the temple of Jerusalem, Christianity (in India, in the Coptic and Ethiopic churches) and
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