Hopes rise for end to Syro-Malabar ‘liturgy war’

Clergy in the Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly say they have reached an agreement with the hierarchy of the Church

Hopes are rising, again, for a resolution to the decades-long liturgy dispute roiling the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church.

Syro-Malabar Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil, pictured at Westminster Cathedral in London, England, in Sept. 18, 2024. © Mazur/cbcew.org.uk.

Clergy on the front line of the dispute in India’s Archeparchy of Ernakulam-Angamaly say they have reached an agreement with the hierarchy of the Syro-Malabar Church, the second largest of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome after the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

But local priests are wary of declaring the controversy over because previous agreements have fallen through at the last minute. They are waiting for a statement on the agreement to be released by Syro-Malabar leader Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil and Archbishop Joseph Pamplany, the archiepiscopal vicar of Ernakulam-Angamaly.

The clergy have asked Thattil and Pamplany to publish the statement by Sunday, June 29, so they are able to read it out in churches in the archeparchy, which serves around half a million people in the southern Indian state of Kerala — roughly 10% of the total number of Syro-Malabar Catholics worldwide.

The agreement would take effect July 3, when Syro-Malabar Catholics celebrate one of the most important dates in their calendar, the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, considered the founder of the autonomous, self-governing Eastern Church.

Under the agreement, the archeparchy’s parishes would no longer be required to abandon their preferred way of celebrating the Syro-Malabar Church’s Eucharistic liturgy, known as the Holy Qurbana. But they will undertake to celebrate a new version of the Eucharistic liturgy on Sundays and other holy days of obligation.

The agreement also reverses a controversial overhaul of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy’s curia in October 2024 overseen by Bishop Bosco Puthur, who stood down as the archeparchy’s apostolic administrator Jan. 11.

Reports suggest the agreement has the blessing of both the Syro-Malabar Church’s Synod of Bishops — the Eastern Church’s supreme authority — and the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Eastern Churches.

Local clergy say that, in addition to the statement from Thattil and Pamplany, they are awaiting the publication of a list announcing the transfer of figures brought into the curia during the overhaul.

They add that if the statement deviates from the agreement reached behind closed doors or curia members are not reassigned, the dispute will continue.

Priests suggest that Thattil and Pamplany are under pressure to water down the agreement from a group of bishops and lay people who believe all Syro-Malabar dioceses should adopt the new Eucharistic liturgy without concessions.

Lay supporters of the new liturgy held a protest at the Eastern Church’s Mount St. Thomas headquarters June 19, calling for Thattil and Pamplany’s resignations.

In the new uniform mode of the Syro-Malabar Eucharistic liturgy, the priest faces the people during the Liturgy of the Word, turns toward the altar (ad orientem) for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and faces the people again after Communion.

The Syro-Malabar Synod of Bishops ordered the introduction of the new liturgy in all dioceses in 2021. But in the Ernakulam-Angamaly archeparchy, most priests and lay people want clergy to continue celebrating the liturgy facing the people throughout (versus populum), arguing it is in harmony with the reforms of Vatican Council II and deeply rooted after more than 50 years of use.

Catholics in the archeparchy have expressed their opposition to the new liturgy through hunger strikes, boycotts, and burning effigies of cardinals, as well as burning letters from Church officials and turning them into paper boats.

Pope Francis became involved in the dispute in 2021, when he wrote a letter exhorting all Syro-Malabar Catholics “to proceed to a prompt implementation of the uniform mode of celebrating the Holy Qurbana, for the greater good and unity of your Church.”

A year later, he sent another letter, addressed to the archeparchy’s members, urging them to take the “difficult and painful step” of adopting the uniform liturgy by Easter Sunday that year, which they declined to do.

In 2023, Pope Francis named the Slovak Jesuit Archbishop Cyril Vasil’ as his delegate to the archeparchy. During a stormy visit to Kerala, Vasil’ demanded the adoption of the new liturgy, telling priests and laity they were either “with the pope, or against him.”

Vasil’ set a deadline of August 2023 for acceptance of the new liturgy, saying that noncompliance would lead to disciplinary action. But priests again defied the deadline.

At the end of 2023, the pope accepted the resignation of the 78-year-old Cardinal George Alencherry as Major Archbishop. Francis also sent a hard-hitting video message to clergy and laity in the archeparchy, urging them to accept the change by Christmas or face canonical penalties. But the deadline also passed without a resolution.

When Thattil succeeded Alencherry as head of the Syro-Malabar Church in January 2024, he initially adopted a conciliatory tone, saying his policy on the liturgical dispute and other matters would be “to go behind the lost sheep.”

But he was among the signatories of a letter issued that month by 49 Syro-Malabar bishops calling for the archeparchy to accept the new uniform liturgy. The archeparchy’s clergy snubbed the letter.

In June 2024, Thattil and Puthur issued a letter saying that if priests failed to adopt the new form of the Eucharistic liturgy by July 3, they would be considered in schism and barred from priestly ministry.

But shortly before the deadline, Thattil and Puthur conceded that Ernakulam-Angamaly’s parishes could continue celebrating the liturgy versus populum if they offered at least one new uniform Eucharistic liturgy on Sundays and major feast days.

Some observers suggested the concession had resolved the dispute. But the truce unraveled in the months that followed. In October 2024, delays to the ordination of new priests and the curia overhaul sparked a protest in the form of a play, in which a demonstrator dressed as the Major Archbishop wielded a pruning saw to threaten a chained man portraying a seminarian.

In January 2025, priests opposed to the new liturgy who had occupied the Major Archbishop’s House were dragged out of the building in the early hours by police officers.

But following Pamplany’s appointment as apostolic administrator in the same month, a new round of talks began between the archeparchy’s representatives and the Syro-Malabar hierarchy. Thattil and Pamplany held a June 19 meeting with priests at which the tentative agreement was reached.