Resurrection: Closed Roman Catholic Church Re-Opening as Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

Here’s story about a church closure with a happy ending —and a church transformation that you don’t hear about very often:

A Yonkers Roman Catholic church shuttered last year in a parish consolidation will celebrate its rebirth Saturday  as an Eastern Rite congregation.

The Rev. Sunny Mathew, 43, the new congregation’s pastor, said the move to Yonkers realizes a longtime dream for his parishioners, who began their congregation in 1984 in New York City. Most Holy Trinity Church at 18 Trinity Plaza will be occupied by St. Mary’s Malankara Catholic Church, an Indian congregation that for 17 years worshiped in the chapel at Salesian High School in New Rochelle.

“It is a realization of our almost 32-year dream. At the same time, we hope it will increase the self-esteem of our people and it will help them to establish their own identity here,” Mathew said. “This will help them to witness more to the rich Eastern tradition.”

St. Mary’s Malankara Catholic Church will hold its inaugural celebration at 4 p.m. Saturday in English. It will be the first Malankara Catholic church in Westchester County.

Mathew said he invited the church’s former parishioners as well as representatives from Yonkers’ many Indian Christian denominations and the bishop of the Malankara Catholic Church in the United States.

“It will be their house too,” Mathew said of Most Holy Trinity’s former parishioners. “Just as our people go to the Latin holy Mass, they can come to this Mass.”

The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, also known as the Malankara Syrian Catholic Church, is a Kerala, India-based eastern-Catholic denomination in full communion with Rome but with many traditions that resemble Orthodox Christian denominations. The Malankara church is one of several Indian Christian denominations that trace their origin to the Apostle St. Thomas, who is believed to have evangelized in India.

More about the Syro-Malankara Church, from CNEWA: 

During the 18th century there were no less than four formal attempts to reconcile the Catholic and Malankara Orthodox Syrian Churches, all of which failed.

In 1926, a group of five Malankara Orthodox Syrian bishops who were opposed to the jurisdiction of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch in India commissioned one of their own number, Mar Ivanios, to open negotiations with Rome with a view to reconciliation. They asked only that their liturgy be preserved and that the bishops be allowed to retain their dioceses. After discussions, Rome required only that the bishops make a profession of faith and that their baptisms and ordinations be proven valid in each case.

In the event, only two of the five bishops accepted the new arrangement with Rome, including Mar Ivanios. These two bishops, a priest, a deacon and a layman were received into the Catholic Church together on September 20, 1930. Later in the 1930s two more bishops, from among those who had favored the jurisdiction of the Syrian Patriarch in India, were received into communion with Rome.

This triggered a significant movement of faithful into the new Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. By 1950 there were some 65,588 faithful, in 1960 112,478, and in 1970 183,490. There are now over 400,000 faithful in six dioceses, all of them in Kerala State, India.

You can read a more extensive history here. 

Photo: Mark Vergari / The Journal News