The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

Denomination·Founded 1930 CE·est. ~465,000, mostly in Kerala with dioceses in North America and Europe; the Annuario Pontificio figure was about 437,000 in 2012 and has grown since.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → The Eastern Catholic Churches → The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

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Story of The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

20 September 1930.

At Kollam, Mar Ivanios, Mar Theophilos, a priest, a deacon and a layman were received into the Catholic Church. Five people. Within a generation there were hundreds of thousands, drawn largely from the Malankara Orthodox and Jacobite communities, and Pius XI erected a hierarchy for them in 1932. Whether the growth was conversion or attrition is still argued in Kerala.

Add to My Beliefs →
Where it is toldThe church's own accounts, and the Malankara Orthodox counter-account
Who appearsMar Ivanios, Mar Theophilos, and the Malankara synod of 1926
What it teachesThat the same act can be a homecoming and a departure depending on who is telling it
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The reception at Kollam on 20 September 1930 involved five men. Mar Ivanios had been given a mandate by the Malankara synod at Parumala in 1926 to explore reunion; the synod did not follow him when he acted. Growth came mostly from Malankara Orthodox and Jacobite parishes over the following decades, and the church counts around 465,000 members today with dioceses in Kerala, mission eparchies elsewhere in India, and eparchies in North America and Europe. Cardinal Baselios Cleemis has been Major Archbishop-Catholicos since 2007 and was created cardinal in 2012. The Kerala Christian landscape now has four churches celebrating substantially the same West Syriac liturgy, three of them in dispute with each other.

The same ground, other faiths

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