Saint Thomas's Indians, with a catholicos of their own since 1912.
The autocephalous Oriental Orthodox church of Kerala, which traces itself to the apostle Thomas, threw off Portuguese jurisdiction at the Coonan Cross in 1653, and established its own Catholicate of the East at Niranam in 1912. Its 1934 constitution has been fought over in Indian courts for ninety years and upheld by the Supreme Court repeatedly.
DeitiesOne God in three persons; the incarnate Word in one united nature, confessed in the West Syriac tradition.
Founded1912 CE · Niranam, Kerala
FounderThomas the Apostle, by the church's own account; the Catholicate re-established in 1912
AfterlifeResurrection and judgment; the dead are prayed for by name and the tombs of holy bishops are visited.
TextsThe Peshitta and the Malayalam Bible · The Qurbana of Saint James · The 1934 Constitution of the Malankara Church
The map
The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →
c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 451 CE Oriental Orthodoxy 1912 CE The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church
Thomas came here in 52.
The church holds that the apostle Thomas landed at Kodungallur in AD 52, founded seven and a half churches along the Malabar coast, and was killed at Mylapore near Madras in 68. The tradition is old and continuous in Kerala; outside historians treat the second-century Acts of Thomas as legend and the Indian Christian presence as securely attested from about the third century onward.
held by most
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The Catholicos of the East sits in India.
The Catholicate was re-established at Niranam in 1912 and the church has governed itself under its own constitution since 1934. The Jacobite Syrian Christian Church contests exactly this: it holds that the Patriarch of Antioch retains authority over the Malankara church, and Indian courts have been deciding between the two positions since the nineteenth century.
⚖ contested within
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P
Parumala Thirumeni.
Geevarghese Mar Gregorios died at Parumala in 1902, and people were coming to his tomb for healing within months. The Malankara church declared him a saint in 1947 — its own canonisation, of its own bishop, on its own authority, which was the point. The pilgrimage each November draws hundreds of thousands, Christian and not.
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Pesaha appam.
On Maundy Thursday every household makes unleavened appam marked with a cross and a sweet coconut milk to go with it, and the oldest man in the house breaks and distributes it after the family prayers. Any left over is burned rather than thrown away. Nothing about it is optional and nothing about it happens in church.
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