History
The Catholic Church plays a conspicuous role in the day-to-day life of the fishermen of Thoothoor village. The conversion of the Hindu fishermen of this village may be traced back to A.D. 1544. The event cummulated in the works of St. Francis Xavier, who is said to have converted 10,000 Mukkuva fishermen living in thirteen villages along the coast (from Pallam to Poovar—Neerody, Vallavilai, Eraviputhenthurai, Thoothoor, Poothurai, Thengapattanam, Enayam, Midalam, Vaniyakudy, Colachel, Kadiapattanam, Muttom and Pallam) in December 1544. Immediately after this conversion, Hindu temples and idols which had been built earlier were removed and replaced with a cross and thatches for worship. In due course, they were converted into churches.
In 1600, the Thoothoor Parish Church was brought under the Padroado. Subsequently this Parish came under the Diocese of Cochin. In 1838, St. Thomas Church, Thoothoor and other adjacent coastal Churches from Pallithura to Erayumanthurai were brought under the Diocese of Varapuzha. This unification brought the Padroado–Propaganda dispute to a crucial stage. Ultimately St. Thomas Church, Thoothoor was brought under the Diocese of Cochin with its revival in 1850.
The Diocese of Thiruvananthapuram was founded on 1 July 1937. But only in 1952 were all the coastal Churches from Pallithura to Erayumanthurai added to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Trivandrum or Thiruvananthapuram Diocese. Thu,s at present Thoothoor Parish Church is one of the Foranate Churches of Trivandrum Diocese.
Read more about this topic: Thoothoor
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)