Titus I Mar Thoma

Titus I Mar Thoma was known as Thithoos Mar Thoma Metropolitan (Thithoos is Aramaic and Malayalam) among his people, and was the first Mar Thoma (1893–1909) after the formation of Marthoma church. He was a saintly and missionary bishop of the church. His time was a period of renovation and reformation of the Malankara Church.

On the South Western coast of India lies a small state known as Kerala It was here in the 1st century, Thomas the Apostle arrived to preach the gospel to the Jewish community. Some of the Jews and locals including the wise men who saw Jesus as a baby at Bethlehem, became followers of Jesus of Nazareth. They were known as Nasrani people and their church as Malankara Church. They followed a unique Hebrew-Syriac Christian tradition which included several Jewish elements and Indian customs.

As a bishop, Thithoos Mar Thoma Metropolitan took charge of a church that was like a ship in turbulent waters. Malankara church was split into two, Bava faction (Jacobites) and Metran faction. Thithoos Mar Thoma was the Metropolitan of the Metran faction, which later chose the name Malanakara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, now popularly known as Mar Thoma Church. This church remained completely independent and did not join the Bava (Patriarch of Antioch) faction. (Jacobite faction became Orthodox churches after 1912). In the litigation between the two factions that began in 1879 and ended in 1889, the Metran faction lost all its properties to the Bava faction. It was at this time Thithoos Mar Thoma took charge as Metropolitan.