Diocese of Quilon

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Diocese of Quilon
Basic data
Country India
Metropolitan bishopric Archdiocese of Trivandrum
Diocesan bishop Paul Antony Mullassery
Emeritus diocesan bishop Joseph Gabriel Fernandez
Stanley novel
founding 1886
surface 1,950 km²
Parishes 102 (2014 / AP 2015 )
Residents 5,598,000 (2014 / AP 2015 )
Catholics 263,900 (2014 / AP 2015 )
proportion of 4.7%
Diocesan priest 98 (2014 / AP 2015 )
Religious priest 51 (2014 / AP 2015 )
Catholics per priest 1,771
Friars 104 (2014 / AP 2015 )
Religious sisters 973 (2014 / AP 2015 )
rite Roman rite
cathedral Infant Jesus Cathedral (Quilon Tangassery)
Website Homepage of the diocese
Inscription on one of the 1000 year old, copper Christian privilege plaques from Quilon
Giovanni de Marignolli, Papal Legate in Quilon, 1348–1349
Episcopal house and episcopal chapel in Quilon
Episcopal house chapel with Bishop Joseph Fernandez, 1998. The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church was founded here in 1930 .
Quilon Bishop's Chapel, memorial stone in memory of the founding of the Syro-Malankan rite, 1930
Quilon-Tangasseri, 400-year-old Infant Jesus Cathedral; Demolished in 2006 and replaced by a new building.
Quilon-Tangasseri, new Cathedral of the Infant Jesus
Quilon-Tangasseri, square in front of the cathedral, monument to the bishops and vicars apostolic

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Quilon ( lat. : Dioecesis Quilonensis ) is in India situated Roman Catholic diocese based in Kollam (Quilon). It traces itself back to the Apostle Thomas and sees itself as the oldest diocese in the country.

history

According to the constant local tradition, the apostle Thomas landed in today's Kerala in 52 and founded 7 Christian communities along the Malabar coast , of which Quilon or Kollam is named as the southernmost. At the time of St. Thomas there was a trading and port settlement there, which also owned a Jewish community. The apostle was the first to proselytize among these compatriots. It is narrated that when he left he consecrated 2 bishops who continued to look after the local Christians.

The importance of the square increased more and more in the early Middle Ages due to the spice trade, especially with China . Finally, the city was formally founded in 825 by the Chera king Rajasekhara Varman (820-844), with which the Malayalam calendar (Kolla Varsham) begins. At that time, Kollam was the capital of the province of Venad, which developed into an independent state in the 12th century. The Europeans called the city Quilon. At that time, Christians received numerous privileges from the king, which were recorded on engraved copper plates for durability. Some of these records, which are over 1000 years old, have been preserved to this day and are among the treasures of Indian history.

The Italian monk John of Montecorvino landed in Quilon in 1291 and looked after the Christians found there before he crossed India to the east and finally proselytized in China; Marco Polo visited Quilon in 1292.

In 1320 the Provencal Dominican Father Jordanus Catalanus de Severac moved to Asia on papal mandate, where he settled in Quilon to serve the local Christians as a pastor. From 1323 baptisms that he performed here are documented. In 1328 he traveled to Avignon and reported to Pope John XXII. about the local Christian community, whereupon he issued the bull "Romanus Pontifex" on August 9, 1329 and thus officially brought into being the diocese of Quilon, the first of all Catholic Indian dioceses. On August 21 of the same year, the bull "Venerabili Fratri Jordano" followed, with which the pontiff appointed Father Jordanus as the first shepherd . As a suffragan diocese, Quilon was subordinate to the Latin Archdiocese of Sultaniya in Persia, today's Soltaniyeh , in the Iranian province of Zanjan ; at that time the capital of the Ilkhan dynasty, which was open to Christianity . Bishop Jordanus also wrote a detailed description of India and the conditions it encountered, which we have received under the title “Mirabilia Descripta”. He was stoned by Muslims in Bombay in 1336 .

When the missionary and papal legate Giovanni de Marignolli came to Quilon in 1348, he did not meet Bishop Jordanus, but found a Latin Christian community there, which he looked after for a year and four months and whose church he decorated with paintings before he left. In addition, to commemorate his stay there, he erected a marble column crowned by a cross with Indian and Latin inscriptions, as well as the papal and his own coat of arms, which is attested by the Dutch clergyman Baldeus in 1662, but at that time - more than 200 years after its erection attributed to St. Thomas by local believers.

The diocese continued to exist formally, but was orphaned and no longer had an official hierarchy. After arriving in India, the Portuguese founded a trading post there in 1502 and built a "fort", of which an impressive ruin still exists today and is one of the city's landmarks. Not far from there, the Portuguese governor built his residence, which is now the domicile of the Bishop of Quilon. During this time, St. Franz Xaver (1506–1552) also worked in the port city for a long time. In 1557 the old diocese of Quilon was dissolved by canon law and the city and the surrounding area were added to the diocese of Cochin , whose shepherds resided in Quilon in the 18th century during the Dutch occupation of Cochin ; where Bishop Clemens Joseph Colaco Leitao (1704–1776) even died and is buried there.

On April 28, 1838, the area of ​​the Diocese of Quilon became part of the Apostolic Vicariate Malabar , which was again divided into the three independent vicariates Verapoly, Mangalore and Quilon on May 12, 1845 . The latter received only the rank of Pro-Vicariate and the first Pro-Vicar Bernardine Baccinelli received the episcopal ordination only in 1847. On March 15, 1853, Pope Pius IX. the Pro-Vicariate Quilon to the Apostolic Vicariate . After more than 500 years, Pope Leo XIII restored it . on September 1, 1886, with the Apostolic Constitution Humanae salutis , the diocese of Quilon and subordinated it as a suffragan diocese to the current Archdiocese of Verapoly .

On May 26, 1930, the Quilon diocese gave parts of its territory to establish the Kottar diocese . Further assignments of territory took place on July 1, 1937 to found the Trivandrum diocese and on December 21, 1985 to found the Punalur diocese . On June 17, 2004, the Quilon diocese was subordinated to the Archdiocese of Trivandrum as a suffragan.

Founding site of the Syro-Malankar rite

The Swiss Carmelite Alois Maria Benziger, 1905–31 Bishop of Quilon, was very interested in oriental liturgies, which led to a friendship with the Jacobite Archbishop Geevarghese Mar Ivanios Panicker . This belonged to the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church , which is strongly represented in the Quilon district . He and his suffragan bishop Mar Theophilos von Tiruvalla sought long-term connection to Rome. Benziger revised the Jacobite missal (western Syrian liturgy) slightly with Mar Ivanios and took the two bishops together with a priest and several believers on behalf of Pope Pius XI. into the Catholic Church. The solemn act took place on September 20, 1930 in the house chapel of the Bishop of Quilon. Then the first Holy Mass was celebrated there immediately in this newly created rite of the Catholic Church. Today it is a separate branch of the Catholic Church under the name Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and in 2010 comprised approx. 500,000 believers in several dioceses. In the episcopal house chapel in Quilon, a plaque set into the wall commemorates the event.

cathedral

Cathedral of the diocese is the newly built Infant Jesus Cathedral in Kollam-Tangassery, which replaces the cathedral church of the same name, which was demolished in 2006 and dates back to 1610. Tangassery is the old fortress and port area of ​​Quilon, where the Portuguese fort, the bishop's residence and a colonial cemetery are also located. According to tradition, the old cathedral church of St. George, of which Giovanni de Marignolli also reports, is also said to have been located there. The ancient church of St. Thomas allegedly stood on the cliff near the current fort ruin (Fort St. Thomas) and the Portuguese cemetery located next to it. It still existed during the Dutch occupation, but was washed away by the sea, like a large part of the settlement facing the sea.

territory

The diocese of Quilon includes the district Kollam and in the district of Alappuzha located taluks Chengannur , Karthikapally and Mavelikara in the state of Kerala .

Ordinaries

Vicars Apostolic of Quilon

Bishops of Quilon

In 2010 a memorial was erected at the Infant-Jesus Cathedral in Kollam for all the deceased Vicars or Bishops of the Diocese of Quilon, on which their names are listed.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Roman Catholic Diocese of Quilon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the history of the Thomas Christians, with the mention of Kollam as one of the 7 early Christian communities
  2. ↑ The 7 original communities of St. Thomas on the Malabar coast
  3. ↑ Page of the Indian Bishops' Conference on the History of the Diocese of Quilon ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cbcisite.com
  4. ^ The Quilon copper plates with pictures
  5. ↑ Website of the Dominicans on Father Jordanus Catalanus and his mission to India ( Memento from 7 July 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) (English)
  6. ↑ Report of the missionary Giovanni de Marignolli about his visit to Quilon in 1348
  7. ↑ On the memorial column of the papal legate Giovanni de Marignolli, from 1348
  8. ↑ On Mar Ivanios see Johannes Madey
    Kurian Valuparampil:  PANICKER, Geevarghese Thomas Mar Ivanios. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 6, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-044-1 , Sp. 1478-1481.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  9. ↑ On Mar Theophilos of Tiruvalla ( Memento from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ History of the Cathedral of Quilon ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.infantjesuscathedral.com
  11. ↑ Website on the history of Quilon-Tangassery ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.reocities.com
  12. ↑ Newspaper report on the inauguration of the monument in 2010, with a photo of the monument