Francis Acharya - Foundation of Kurisumala Ashram

Foundation of Kurisumala Ashram

It was at the invitation of Zacharias Mar Athanasios, the Bishop of Tiruvalla, that Fr. Francis came to Kerala to start the ashram. In the course of time, Bede Griffiths joined him there. On December 1, 1956, the two of them started the new foundation Kristiya Sanyasa Samaj,Kurisumala Ashram at Tiruvalla in the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Eventually they were successful in obtaining 88 acres (360,000 m2) of land and on March 20, 1958, the eve of Saint Benedict’s day, Fr. Francis, Fr. Bede, and two seminarians traveled sixty miles to the site, high up on the holy mountain of Kurisumala. Well contented with their hilltop, they spent the next few months in a hut made of bamboo and plaited palm leaves with no facilities, no furniture, and a floor covered simply with cow dung. While the center of their lives was the prayer of the Church and celebration of its feasts and mysteries, they had to find a way of supporting themselves, so they soon started a dairy farm with cattle imported from Jersey.

On August 6, 1968, Fr. Francis took Indian citizenship. Later the same month Fr. Bede, after ten years in Kristiya Sanyasa Samaj,Kurisumala Ashram, left for Shantivanam with two brothers, Br. Anugrah and Br. Ajit, to take over that ashram from Swami Abhishiktananda. By 1974, Fr. Francis’s health was declining. For several months he underwent Ayurvedic treatment, staying in a Hindu doctor’s house at Geethabhavan, Kottayam. In 1979, he traveled to Belgium, back to the monastery of his youth, Scourmont Abbey, and in a hospital near the abbey he had a hip operation, which was not very successful. He returned to Kurisumala and soon the other hip was also affected. Already at an advanced age and battling against pain, fear, and ill health, he started and completed his masterpiece, the Prayer with the Harp of Spirit, four volumes translated from the ancient Syrian book Panqitho, with certain adaptations to Indian culture.