Thomas Christians in Roman communion — arguing about which way the priest faces.
The second-largest Eastern Catholic church, five million strong in Kerala and its diaspora, East Syriac in rite and Catholic in communion. Latinised by the Portuguese from 1599, given its own hierarchy in 1887 and its own liturgy back in stages, it spent four years in an open liturgical revolt that ended in a compromise in 2025.
DeitiesOne God in three persons; Catholic doctrine in an East Syriac liturgical form.
Founded1599 CE · Kerala
AfterlifeResurrection and judgment; the Catholic teaching on purgatory, with Kerala's own long commemorations of the dead.
TextsThe Bible in Malayalam and Syriac · The Qurbana of Addai and Mari · The Chaldean-Malabar liturgical books
The map
The Syro-Malabar 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 1596 CE The Eastern Catholic Churches 1599 CE The Syro-Malabar Church
Thomas came here in 52, and we stayed with Rome.
The Syro-Malabar Church holds the same apostolic tradition as every Saint Thomas Christian body in Kerala, and it is the part of that community that remained in communion with Rome after the split of 1653. It is now the second-largest Eastern Catholic church in the world.
held by most
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Eastern in rite, Catholic in communion, and not a Latin diocese.
The church prays the Qurbana of Addai and Mari, keeps its own canon law, elects its own bishops within its territory and has been a major archiepiscopal church since 1992. Getting there took a century of asking Rome to undo what Rome had imposed, and the church regards its rite as a possession rather than a permission.
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K
Kuriakose Elias Chavara.
A priest of the nineteenth century who co-founded Kerala's first indigenous religious congregations, set up a Sanskrit school, brought in a printing press, and issued a circular telling every parish to open a school beside its church — which is a large part of why Kerala reads. Canonised by Francis in 2014.
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The Holy Qurbana, and which way the priest faces.
The East Syriac liturgy in Malayalam, sung throughout, is the centre of Syro-Malabar life. From 2021 it was also the centre of an open revolt: the synod ordered a uniform mode in which the priest faces the people for part of the Qurbana and the altar for the rest, and the archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly, with about half a million faithful and hundreds of priests, refused.
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