Chronology of Catholic Dioceses:The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church

See a list of abbreviations used in this list.

1: Historical Background

The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church is an automous Catholic Church of the Chaldean (Eastern Syrian) liturgical, historical and cultural tradition.

a) The Assyrian Church of the East To understand this church, we need to start with the Assyrian Church of the East. It is not known exactly when Christianity first took root in upper Mesopotamia (now: partly in Iraq, partly in Turkey), but a Christian presence had certainly been established there by the mid-2nd century. In the 3rd century, the area was conquered by the Persians. Although this was to be a multi-ethnic church, the Assyrian people traditionally played a central role in its ecclesial life. Its geographical location caused it to be become known simply as "The Church of the East".

Around the year 300, the bishops were first organized into an ecclesiastical structure under the leadership of a Catholicos, the bishop of the Persian royal capital of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. In the 5th century, the Church of the East gravitated towards the radical Antiochene form of christology that had been articulated by Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, and fell out of communion with the church of the Roman Empire.

The Church of the East was always a minority in largely Zoroastrian Persia, but nevertheless it flourished for many centuries. The church expanded through missionary activity into areas as far away as India, Tibet, China and Mongolia. This continued even after the Mesopotamian homeland was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in the 7th century.

b) The Thomas Christians

When the Portuguese arrived in India at the end of the 15th Century, they encountered a Christian community claiming to have been founded by the Apostle Thomas when he evangelized India following the death and resurrectiomn of Christ. Located in what is now Kerala state, they were fully integrated into Indian society as a separate caste. They were in full communion with the Assyrian Church of the East, which in early centuries had regularly sent bishops to India to ordain deacons and priests. In the 8th century India received its own Metropolitan who was assigned the tenth place in the Assyrian hierarchy. But because the Metropolitans generally did not speake the local language, real jurisdiction was placed in the hands of an Indian priest with the title of "Archdeacon of All India".

c) The Malabar Thomas Christians after the arrival of the Portuguese

Members of this church are directly descended from the Thomas Christians that the Portuguese encountered in 1498 while exploring the Malabar coast of India (now the state of Kerala). As mentioned above, they were in full communion with the Assyrian Church in Persia. But they greeted the Portuguese as fellow Christians and as representatives of the Church of Rome, whose special status they had continued to acknowledge despite centuries of isolation.

In general, however, the Portuguese did not accept the ligitimacy of local Malabar tradition, and began to impose Latin usages upon the Thomas Christians. At a synod of Diamper in 1599 under the presidency of the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa, a number of such latinizations were adopted, including the appointment of Portuguese bishops, changes in the Eucharistic liturgy, the use of Roman vestments, the requirement of clerical celibacy, and the setting up of the Inquisition. This provoked widespread discontent which culminated in the decision of most Malabars in 1653 to break with Rome. In response, Pope Alexander VII sent Carmelite friars to Malabar to deal with the situation. By 1662 the majority of the dissidents had returned to communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

d) The establishment of Syro-Malabar jurisdictions

European Carmelites would continue to serve as bishops in the Syro-Malabar Church. But in 1887, two Vicariates Apostolic were established for the Syro-Malabars, in Trichur and in Kottayam. In 1896, this was reorganized, when the Holy See established three Vicariates Apostolic for the Thomas Christians (Trichur, Ernakulam and Changanacherry), under the guidance of indigenous Syro-Malabar bishops. In 1923 Pope Pius XI set up a full-fledged Syro-Malabar Catholic hierarchy. In 1934 Pope Pius XI initiated a process of liturgical reform in view of a restoration of the oriental nature of the heavily latinized Syro-Malabar rite.

The new autonomy initiated a strong revival of the church. While in 1876 there were approximately 200,000 Syro-Malabar Catholics, this number had more than doubled by 1931. In 1977 the Holy See began to establish Syro-Malabar dioceses throughout India, even where Latin dioceses already exist.

Until 1992 there was no single head of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, but two metropolitan archdioceses (Ernakulam and Changanacherry) of equal rank. But ion 16 December 1992 Pope John Paul II raised it to the rank of a Major Archepiscopal Church and appointed Cardinal Anthony Padiyara of Ernakula-Angamaly as Major Archbishop.

Now there are 25 dioceses for well over 3 million faithful, most of them in Kerala State, India.

-CT (based on Robertson 1995, CE, and AP 2000)

2: Jurisdictions

1887: Kottayam [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Verapoly) - India
1887: Trichur [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Verapoly) - India
1896: Changanacherry [Syr.-Malab.] (AV, new name, previously Kottayam) - India
1896: Ernakulam [Syr.-Malab.] (AV, detached from Kottayam, and from Trichur) - India
1911: Kottayam [Syr.-Malab.] (AV, set up as a non-territorial diocese for the Suddhists, detached from Changanacherry [Syr.-Malab.] AV) - India
1923: Changanacherry [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1923: Ernakulam [Syr.-Malab.] (Metr.) - India
1923: Kottayam [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1923: Trichur [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1950: Palai [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Kottayam [Syr.-Malab.]) - India
1953: Tellicherry [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Calicut) - India
1968: Chanda [Syr.-Malab.] (Ap.Ex., detached from Amravati, and from Nagpur) - India
1968: Satna [Syr.-Malab.] (Ap.Ex., detached from Jabalpur) - India
1968: Ujjain [Syr.-Malab.] (Ap.Ex., detached from Indore) - India
1972: Bijnor [Syr.-Malab.] (Ap.Ex., detached from Meerut) - India
1972: Jagdalpur [Syr.-Malab.] (Ap.Ex., detached from AV Raipur)- India
1973: Mananthavady [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Tellicherry [Syr.-Malab.]) - India
1974: Palghat [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Trichur [Syr.-Malab.]) - India
1977: Bijnor [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1977: Chanda [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1977: Jagdalpur [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1977: Satna [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1977: Ujjain [Syr.-Malab.] - India
1977: Kanjirapally [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Changanacherry, and from Palai) - India
1977: Rajkot [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Ahmedabad) - India
1978: Irinjalakuda [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Trichur [Syr.-Malab.]) - India
1984: Gorakhpur [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Varanasi) - India
1988: Kalyan [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Bombay) - India
1992: Ernakulam-Angamaly (Major Archeparchy) [Syr.-Malab.] - (formerly Archeparchy, and new name, previously Ernakulam) - India
1995: Tellicherry [Syr.-Malab.] (Metr., was part of the Metropolitan Province of Ernakulam-Angamaly) - India
1995: Trichur [Syr.-Malab.] (Metr., was part of the Metropolitan Province of Ernakulam-Angamaly) - India
1996: Thuckalay (Thakala) [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Changanacherry [Syr.-Malab.]) - India
1999: Adilabad [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Chanda [Syr.-Malab.]) - India
1999: Belthangady [Syr.-Malab.] (detached from Tellicherry [Syr.-Malab.]) - India
2001: Saint Thomas of Chicago [Syr.-Malab.] - USA