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Syro Malankara Religion
The Syro Malankara religion or Syro Malankara Catholic Church is also known as Malankara Syrian Catholic Church, is an Eastern Catholic Church in the Catholic Communion, in union with the The Pope. The church is historically linked to the Syrian Church. It has a membership worldwide of approximately 500,000. This group originated with Saint Thomas The Apostle who came from India in A.D. 52.
In the course of time, due to the latinization policy of the Portuguese, the Church in Kerala was divided in two; the group who rejected the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities eventually became known as the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church. This latter group became gradually closer to the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, leading to a series of splits concerning the extent to which the Patriarch would be given authority; the faction giving the Patriarch full administrative powers became the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church.
Within the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church was an archbishop, Mar Ivanios, who rejected his church's opinion of the Antiochian Patriarch, and argued for autonomy; rather than joining the more autonomous Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, or the independent Malabar Independent Syrian Church, he decided to join in the communion with the Catholic Church, and submit to the authority of the Pope in Rome. The liturgy of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is West Syrian in character. The liturgy today is done in Malayalam, Syriac, English, Tamil, and Hindi. The Bethany order male and female and Daughters of Mary do religious work in the Syro-Malankara Church.
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