Eight deacons are due to be ordained as priests in India’s Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly Monday, following an almost year-long delay.
The eight men were originally scheduled to be ordained to the priesthood in December 2023, but the ceremony was postponed after it became enmeshed in the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church’s liturgy dispute.
The ordinations will now take place Nov. 4 at Thrikkakara minor seminary in India’s southern Kerala state, the heartland of the Syro-Malabar Church, the second-largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the pope.
The Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy is the most populous of the 35 Syro-Malabar dioceses worldwide, with more than 500,000 members, and is the see of the Eastern Church’s Major Archbishop, or head.
Bishop Bosco Puthur, the archeparchy’s apostolic administrator, confirmed the ordination date in an Oct. 30 circular letter.
He said the new priests would only be permitted to celebrate the new uniform version of the Syro-Malabar Church’s Eucharistic liturgy, which is known as the Holy Qurbana.
He urged parishes where the new priests will be assigned to make arrangements for celebrations of the uniform liturgy.
The majority of parishes in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy reject the new liturgy and want to continue using a form of the liturgy introduced after Vatican Council II, in which priests face the congregation throughout the Eucharistic celebration (versus populum).
The Synod of Bishops — the Syro-Malabar Church’s supreme authority — appealed in August 2021 for the universal adoption of the uniform mode, in which the priest faces the people during the Liturgy of the Word, turns toward the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist (ad orientem), and then faces the people again after Communion.
Thirty-four out of the Eastern Church’s 35 dioceses complied, with sporadic opposition, but there was mass resistance in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy, marked by hunger strikes, physical altercations, and the burning of cardinals in effigy.
Supporters of the versus populum liturgy responded angrily to Puthur’s circular letter, which the bishop asked to be read out in churches Nov. 3.
A spokesman for the activist group Almaya Munnettam (Lay People to the Fore) said the letter would be publicly burned rather than read out in parishes. It described the circular, which also urged Syro-Malabar Catholics not to criticize Church leaders on social media, as “the biggest joke of the year.”
Syro-Malabar leaders declared in June that priests refusing to adopt the new liturgy by July 3 would be considered in schism and barred from ministry.
Shortly before the deadline, both sides reached a compromise in which parishes in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy could continue celebrating the liturgy versus populum if they offered at least one uniform Eucharistic liturgy on Sundays and major feast days.
The priestly ordinations scheduled for December 2023 were delayed after candidates were told to promise in writing to celebrate only the new uniform mode after their ordinations.
Supporters of the versus populum liturgy argued it was wrong to require the deacons to promise to celebrate only the uniform mode when the archeparchy’s priests were offering the new liturgy solely on Sundays and other holy days of obligation.
Earlier this month, Church authorities said the dispensation for the archeparchy’s priests to continue celebrating the versus populum liturgy was a “temporary concession,” rather than a recognition of a right.
“Therefore, the prefect of the [Vatican] Dicastery for the Eastern Churches has stated that this exemption is not available to the new priests,” they explained.
Catholics opposed to the uniform liturgy held a street protest Oct. 13, expressing their frustration at the delay in the priestly ordinations.
Demonstrators dramatized the dispute, with a man covered in chains portraying a deacon and an ashen-faced figure wielding a pruning saw dressed as the Major Archbishop.
On Oct. 29, police prevented a group of priests opposed to the new liturgy from entering Major Archbishop’s House in Ernakulam. The priests were reportedly seeking to hold talks with Bishop Puthur. A video showed police officers in animated conversation with clergy.
Meanwhile, two priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy were recently photographed at Everest Base Camp, at an altitude of 17,598 feet, with a sign saying: “We stand for Mass versus populum.”
