- The Catholic Church in India
The Catholic Church in India is a communion of three individual churches, viz., Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara. According to tradition St. Thomas, the Apostle, converted people to Christianity in Quilon along with other centres of Kerala. The catholic Hierarchy of India was established on October 1, 1886 by Pope Leo XIII through the promulgation of the Bull, "Humanae Salutis". Though the Latin Catholic Church in India has the Apostolic origin it is only from the coming of the western missionaries in the 13th century that we get a clear picture of it.
The Syro-Malabar church traces its origin to St. Thomas, the Apostle. According to tradition he came to India in 52 A.D. and its members are called St. Thomas Christians. It continued its hierarchical relations with the Chaldean churches, and also with the the churches in the Persian Empire. After the coming of the Portuguese the Syro-Malabar Christians were brought under the rule of the Latin Bishops and in 1653, consequent upon the Coonan Cross Declaration, some of them discontinued from the ruling with the Pope.
Those who continued under the Latin rule formed the Church which we now call the Syro-Malabar Church. Those who remained opposed to the Portuguese, tried to have Bishops from the Oriental Churches, came into contact with the Jacobite Patriarch and eventually became Jacobites, of which a fraction of them was reunited to the Catholic Communion in 1930 and is now known as the Syro-Malankara Church.
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