Syro-Malankara Catholic Church - Modern Times

Modern Times

It was in this contentious context that Patriarch Mar Abdulla came to Malankara, and excommunicated Geevarghese Mar Dionysius of Vattasseril in the year 1911. Fr. P.T. Geevarghese (later Archbishop Mar Ivanios) played a vital role in reinstating the position of the excommunicated Metropolitan, and in regaining the self-governance of the Malankara Church. To ward off the undue interference of Patriarch Abdulla in the administration of the temporalities of the Church, Fr. P.T. Geevarghese with the blessing of Geevarghese Mar Dionysius of Vattasseril contacted Abded M’siha, the Patriarch of Antioch from whom Mar Abdulla usurped the Patriarchal See of Antioch, and invited him to visit Malankara and to establish a Catholicate here. Accordingly, Abded M’siha came to Malankara in 1912 and established the Malankara Catholicate. This created a split in the church:

• the faction resisting the Patriarch's administrative interference became the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, an autocephalous Church under its head the Catholicos.
• the faction supporting the Patriarch's administrative interference became the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church

Baselios Paulose I (1912–1913), the first Catholicos, died after a short period of five months on 13 May 1913. After his demise, the See remained vacant until 1925. That was a period of litigation in the Malankara Church, and also a period of spiritual renewal. The litigation for Vattippanam (a fixed deposit of money in the name of the Church) and its after-effects in the community was at its zenith.