Thousands of Catholics took to the streets in southern India Sunday as a tentative truce in the decades-long Syro-Malabar liturgy dispute continued to unravel.
Protesters in Ernakulam, Kerala State, expressed their frustration Oct. 13 at a delay in the priestly ordinations of eight transitional deacons in the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly, as well as recent sweeping changes to the archeparchy’s curia.
The Syro-Malabar Church, which has around five million members, is the largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the pope after the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy is the biggest 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.
When demonstrators reached the Major Archbishop’s House on Sunday, three protesters sought to dramatize the tensions in the archeparchy.
A man covered in chains, representing a deacon, raised his arms, appealing for priestly ordination. Beside him stood an older man with a Vatican flag, representing the deacon’s family.
An ashen-faced figure dressed as the Major Archbishop then rushed over to the two men, threatening them with an orange-handled pruning saw as they begged for mercy.
The protest march was led by lay Catholics carrying a banner calling on Bishop Bosco Puthur, the archeparchy’s administrator, to resign.
Other protesters carried signs with messages such as “We demand the ordination of our 8 deacons now” and “Holy See: Hear the cry of the largest Syro-Malabar diocese.”
The signs were in Malayalam, Kerala’s official language, English, and Italian — suggesting the protest was also aimed at an international audience, including officials in Rome.
Speakers at the protest included A. Jayashankar, a prominent lawyer and social critic who is not a member of the Syro-Malabar Church.
The Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy has been in turmoil since 2017, when it emerged that real estate transactions had reportedly lost the archeparchy $10 million.
The “land scam” scandal provoked a rebellion among the archeparchy’s priests and a lengthy legal battle for Church officials accused of mismanagement.
In an already tense atmosphere, the Synod of Bishops — the Syro-Malabar Church’s supreme authority — asked all dioceses in 2021 to accept the introduction of the new Eucharistic liturgy.
Most priests and lay people in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy refused to adopt the new “uniform” liturgy, arguing that the archeparchy’s priests should be allowed to continue celebrating the liturgy facing the people throughout (versus populum).
In the new uniform mode, the priest faces the people during the Liturgy of the Word, turns toward the altar (ad orientem) for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and then faces the people again after Communion.
Catholics in the archeparchy have expressed their opposition to the new liturgy through boycotts, hunger strikes, and the burning of cardinals in effigy, as well as burning letters from Church officials and turning them into paper boats.
Physical clashes between supporters and opponents of the uniform liturgy in December 2022 led to the closure of the archeparchy’s cathedral, which remained shut until March this year.
In June, Syro-Malabar leaders declared that priests refusing to adopt the new liturgy by July 3 would be considered in schism and barred from ministry.
But just before the deadline elapsed, both sides reached a compromise in which parishes could continue celebrating the liturgy versus populum if they provided at least one uniform Eucharistic liturgy on Sundays and major feast days.
Yet the compromise didn’t resolve the deacons issue. The deacons were due to be ordained in December 2023, but the ceremony was postponed after candidates were asked 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 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.
But in an Oct. 12 press release, the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy 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,” it explained.
The press release said the priestly ordinations were only delayed because the deacons had not submitted a written undertaking to celebrate only the new liturgy.
It added that the apostolic administrator Bishop Puthur had written to the deacons Oct. 12, asking them to meet with him in person, sign the written undertaking, and decide the dates of their priestly ordinations.
But the press release failed to quell the protests the following day. According to Indian media, protesters came from all the archeparchy’s major “forane” churches, converging on the Major Archbishop’s House from two directions.
The protests came shortly after Bishop Puthur’s announcement of sweeping changes to the archeparchy’s curia.
The Oct. 9 personnel changes included the removal of the archeparchy’s protosyncellus, syncellus, chancellor, vice chancellor, and assistant finance officer.
Opponents of the new liturgy expressed outrage at the appointment of Fr. Joshy Puthuva as the archeparchy’s new chancellor, arguing that the priest had been embroiled in the 2017 “land scam” scandal.
Sunday’s protesters said they would not cooperate with Puthur and the new curia officials.
As well as calling for Puthur’s resignation, the priestly ordination of the eight deacons, and the reversal of changes to the curia, the protesters asked for the archeparchy to be given “independent” status.
Media suggested this would entail removing the archeparchy from the oversight of Syro-Malabar Church leaders and making it directly subject to the Holy See.
Sources told The Pillar the protesters were also thinking of the model of the Archeparchy of Kottayam, a unique ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Kerala solely for members of the Knanaya ethnic group.
The Syro-Malabar Media Commission criticized the independence appeal.
In an Oct. 14 social media post, it said it was “ironic” that protesters who rejected Pope Francis’ calls to accept the new liturgy were “trying to become an independent church under the pope.”
“The truth is that those who carry on activities that hurt the pope by holding papal flags don’t have faith in God or a sense of sin,” the commission said.
“The good believers of Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy who have faith and enlightenment can identify such conspiracy tactics.”
