Representatives of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church worldwide will gather this month for the first major archiepiscopal assembly in eight years.
The Aug. 22-25 assembly in Pala, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, will bring together lay people, religious, priests, and bishops to discuss pressing issues facing the second largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome after the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
In a circular letter announcing the meeting, Syro-Malabar leader Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil said it would focus on three topics: “renewal of faith formation, lay participation in evangelization, and empowering of the Syro-Malabar community.”
It is unclear whether the more than 300 participants will address the liturgy dispute that has shaken the Syro-Malabar Church in recent years.
Thattil, who succeeded Cardinal George Alencherry as head of the Eastern Church in January, noted that a major archiepiscopal assembly is a consultative body assisting the major archbishop and the Synod of Bishops, the Syro-Malabar Church’s authoritative governing body.
According to canon law, major archiepiscopal assemblies should be held every five years. The last assembly took place in 2016, but a gathering planned for 2021 was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There will be 128 fewer delegates this year than in 2016, when 488 people attended.
“Considering the practical aspects of conducting the Assembly and to create the suitable atmosphere for presenting and consolidating everyone’s ideas effectively, the Synod of Bishops decided to reduce the number of participants of the assembly,” Thattil wrote in the letter read out in churches Aug. 4.
“Accordingly, with the approval of the Apostolic See, the amended particular law of the Church on the participants of the major archiepiscopal assembly was promulgated through a decree on March 25, 2024.”
“According to this newly promulgated law, 360 members are participating this time, including bishops under the age of 80, priests, religious, and lay representatives.”
The Syro-Malabar Church has approximately 5 million members, based mainly in India, but with a growing diaspora in the United States, Canada, Australia, the U.K., and Ireland.
Pope Francis said in May that Syro-Malabar Catholics “are known, not only in India, but throughout the whole world, for the ‘vigor’ of their faith and piety.”
But the Eastern Church has suffered from a decades-long “liturgy war,” pitting supporters of a new “uniform” mode of the Eastern Church’s Eucharistic liturgy against advocates of a liturgical form introduced after Vatican Council II.
The uniform mode, backed by the Synod of Bishops and the Vatican, blends two ways of celebrating the Syro-Malabar Church’s Eucharistic liturgy: the ancient one in which the priest faces East throughout (ad orientem) and a 20th-century mode in which the priest faces the people throughout (versus populum).
A priest celebrating according to the uniform mode — also known as the “50:50 formula” — faces the people during the Liturgy of the Word, turns toward the altar for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and faces the people again after Communion.
The new liturgy was adopted with sporadic resistance in 34 out of the 35 Syro-Malabar eparchies, or dioceses, but has faced fierce opposition in the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly, the Syro-Malabar Church’s most populous and prominent diocese.
The majority of the archeparchy’s 655,000 members want their version of the liturgy, in which the priest faces the people throughout, to be recognized as a legitimate variant.
The protagonists of the liturgy dispute appeared to reach a fragile truce in July.
Church authorities had set a deadline of July 3 for priests to accept the new liturgy approved or be declared in schism. But in a last-minute compromise, they permitted clergy to continue celebrating the liturgy facing the people throughout as long as they agreed to celebrate one uniform liturgy on Sundays in their parishes.
Yet the threat of disciplinary action remains, according to a new interview with Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, who was appointed papal delegate to the Syro-Malabar Church in July 2023.
The Slovak Jesuit archbishop said that “work is currently underway to establish a special tribunal” for those who threaten Church unity “by inciting disobedience to legitimate authorities and their decrees.”
“For the time being, no action is being taken against priests who have at least partially begun to implement the synodal way of celebrating the liturgy by celebrating according to the new regulations, at least on Sundays and feast days,” Vasil’ said in the interview, posted Aug. 1 on the Slovak bishops’ conference website.
“This does not, of course, mean legitimizing a different celebration on the other days, but only a certain temporary restraint in the application of the necessary penal procedures against priests.”
The archbishop said that the majority of priests in the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly — the center of resistance to the new liturgy — had made the change on Sundays.
“Other priests who stubbornly continue to refuse to celebrate the liturgies according to the norms established by the Synod of Bishops are, by their actions, practically placing themselves in schism with the authority of their own Church and must reckon with legal sanctions,” Vasil’ said.
“During the month of August, a meeting of all the bishops of the Syro-Malabar Church will be held in a regular synod. It is expected that the next steps will be agreed at this synodal meeting of the highest leaders of the Syro-Malabar Church.”
Meanwhile, the Syro-Malabar Catholic world is abuzz with unconfirmed reports of a possible Eucharistic miracle in Kerala.
A Host received by a teen girl at a Mass at St. Sebastian’s Church, Madavana, in the Latin Rite Archdiocese of Verapoly, reputedly transformed into heart-shaped flesh, according to local reports.
Verapoly’s Archbishop Joseph Kalathiparambil is said to have visited the church following the reports.
The Catholic Church has an established process for investigating alleged Eucharistic miracles, involving tests conducted by scientists.
The Archdiocese of Verapoly did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
