The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church is a Chaldean Rite, Major Archiepiscopal Church in Full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the 22 Eastern Catholic Churches in the Catholic Church. It is the largest group among the Saint Thomas Christians and trace its origins to St. Thomas the Apostle who is believed to have come to India in AD 52. The Syro Malabar Church is the largest St. Thomas Christian community in India.The Church was earlier referred to as the Syro- Chaldean Church. They are also referred to as Syrian Catholics in Kerala. Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil is the current head of this church. The first Indian woman Saint, Saint Alphonsa, belongs to this church.

Origin of St. Thomas Christians

According to ancient traditions, which are supported by modern archeological findings St. Thomas reportedly landed at Kodungalloor (Muziris) in 52 A.D. After preaching and establishing Christian communities in different parts of India, he is said to have suffered martyrdom at Mylapur in 72 A.D. Tradition holds that St. Thomas reportedly founded seven churches in Kerala; at Kodungalloor, Niranam, Kollam, Chayal, Kottakkavu, Kokkamangalam and Palayoor among the natives and the Jewish diaspora. There were Jewish colonies in South India before the Christian era and these seven churches are at or near the sites of those colonies. The existance of this church is mentioned by many early church historians. Theophilus as recorded by church historian Philostorgius mentions about a church, priests, liturgy, in the immediate vicinity of the Maldives, which can only apply to a Christian Church and faithful on the adjacent coast of India. The people referred to were the Christians known as a body who had their liturgy in the Syriac language and inhabited the west coast of India, i.e. Malabar. This Church is next mentioned and located by Cosmas Indicopleustes "in Male (Malabar) where the pepper grows"; and he adds that the Christians of Ceylon, whom he specifies as Persians, and "those of Malabar" (the latter he leaves unspecified, so they must have been natives of the country) had a bishop ordained in Persia, and one likewise on the island of Socotra.St. Gregory of Tours , before 590, reports that Theodore, a pilgrim who had gone to Gaul, told him that in that part of India where the corpus (bones) of Thomas the Apostle had first rested, there stood a monastery and a church of striking dimensions and elaboratedly adorned, adding: "After a long interval of time these remains had been removed thence to the city of Edessa." St. Ephraem, the great doctor of the Syrian Church, writes in the forty-second of his "Carmina Nisibina" that the Apostle was put to death in India, and that his remains were subsequently buried in Edessa, brought there by a merchant.

Faith & Communion of Syro Malabarians

 The St. Thomas Christians had hierarchical dependence on the Seleucian Church till the end of the XVI century. The Indian Church of St. Thomas Christians was one of the four "Thomite" Churches of the East. They are known as "Thomite" as St. Thomas the Apostle was their direct or indirect Apostle. The Indian Church of the Thomas Christians in course of time was hierarchically subordinated to the Church of Persia proper first and then to the Chaldean Church which before the 9th century had its headquarters in Seleucia –Ctesiphone, the capital of the Persian Empire. This latter subordination lasted until the end of the 16th century. Communication between Thomas Christians and Rome was impossible due to geographical, political and other circumstances. Absence of communications or relations does not mean that they had no communion. Books brought down from Seleucia contained explicit statements about the divinely instituted Primacy of Rome over the whole Christendom. Bishop Roz seems to have found in Malabar fifty of the so called Nicean or Arabic Canons. Nicean or Arabic canons inculcate that the Roman Patriarch has jurisdiction over all the other Patriarchs -apocryphal. By the arrival of the Portuguese, the Thomas Christians were enabled to enter into relations with Rome. About the attitude of the Thomas Christians Dionisio writes the following: “About the Pope, they consider him as the Vicar of Christ, our Redeemer, on earth; (they consider) the Patriarch as subject to the Pope from whom he receives his power.” In fact it was by threatening them with excommunicatio latae sententiae that Dom Menezes, the Portuguese Latin prelate of Goa made the St. Thomas Christians sign the synod of Diamper. Schism can not be charged till the communion has been broken.

Liturgy

St.Thomas was the common Apostle for all the Thomasine churches. Syriac was a common language. There was a strong Jewish influence in ancient times and the commercial relations and social and cultural contacts due to geographical positions made the liturgical practice common among all Thomasine Churches. Archbishop's House, Changanassery Historians are of the opinion that Thomas established the early liturgy here in Aramaic (Syriac). St. Thomas provided only the rudiments of the liturgy, but it contained all the elements which later on developed into the full structure. The continued use of Syriac language for the Church is partly because they believed the language was close or similar to the actual language that Jesus and the disciples spoke, hence it carried a connection with the land of Israel and Semitic culture that otherwise might have been lost. The liturgy of these churches also carried many symbolic connections with Jerusalem and Semitic culture at large. It was these and other distinctly Christian characteristics that prevented the Indian churches from being absorbed in the Indian religious world, thereby maintaining a distinctive Christian identity. The Syro-Malabar Church kept the liturgy that was in use before the arrival of the Portuguese, but increasingly Latinized it. The St. Thomas Christians especially the Syro Malabar Church in India were under the hierarchy of the Latin Church from 1600 to 1896. Since the beginning, Syro-Malabar liturgy was in Syriac and went through Latinization like many other churches in the 16th century. The vestments, the church furnishings, the place of certain prayer formulas in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, etc. were thoroughly Latinized while the liturgy continued in Syriac. Syriac language was used in church worship until 1968. In the second half of 20th century, there was a movement for better understanding of the liturgical rites. A restored Eucharistic liturgy, drawing on the original East Syrian sources, was approved by Pope Pius XII in 1957 and for the first time on the feast of St. Thomas on July 3, 1962, the vernacular, Malayalam, was introduced for the celebration of the Syro-Malabar rite Mass.[15] Currently they celebrate the Divine Liturgy of Addai and Mari in Malayalam, Syriac or English.