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Church in the WorldVatican corrects remark on St ThomasIndia Anto Akkara - 9 December 2006A large-scale and embarrassing row has ended after the Vatican last week corrected a remark by Pope Benedict XVI about the arrival of St Thomas Apostle in south India. In a series of weekly catecheses on the Twelve Apostles the Pope said, while addressing the general audience on 27 September: "Let us remember that an ancient tradition claims that Thomas first evangelised Syria and Persia, and then went on to western India, from where Christianity also reached southern India." The line - effectively questioning whether St Thomas reached southern India - sparked a strong reaction from the mass-circulation Catholic weekly Satyadeepam (Light of Truth), based in Kerala, south India, and edited by Fr Paul Thelakkat, the spokesman of the 3.4-million-strong Syro Malabar Church which traces its origins to St Thomas. Following a front-page article by the Jesuit scholar George Nedungat, professor at the Oriental Institute attached to the Gregorian University in Rome, the Vatican website last week changed the sentence to "Thomas ... went on to western India, from where also he finally reached southern India." "The Vatican has promptly reacted and corrected the text," Fr Thelakkat told The Tablet on Tuesday. "We are extremely happy about it." Kerala's more than 4 million Christians take pride in their St Thomas legacy and the Catholic Church has marked out seven churches established by the Apostle as centres of pilgrimage. The apostle is said to have reached the Kerala coast in 52 AD. During his apostolic visit to India in 1986, Pope John Paul II visited Chennai's historic St Thomas Mount Church where the apostle was reputedly martyred. Amid increasing anti-Christian activity an employee of St Thomas Mount Church was stabbed to death by an unidentified assailant on 26 November at the saint's shrine. |
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