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Catholic World News News Feature

Syro-Malabar Church leaders seeks greater autonomy from Vatican November 11, 2003

Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, the Major Archbishop who heads the Syro-Malabor Church, has called for greater autonomy for his Eastern-rite flock.

"We should not have to run to Rome for everything," said Cardinal Vithayathil, in an interview in the inaugural English issue of the Sathyadeepam Catholic weekly, published by Ernakulam archdiocese. "There is a need for decentralization of authority."

The Syro-Malabar Church traces its origins to St. Thomas the Apostle, who reached India's Kerela state in 52 AD. Today the Eastern Church has 3.3 million faithful, almost all of them in India. The Syro-Malabar Church also boasts the world's highest rate of religious and clerical vocations, with one priest of nun for every 50 Catholics.

However, among the Eastern Catholic churches headed by their own patriarch or major archbishop, the Syro-Malabar Church is the only one which does not have the power to select its own bishops. (In the other Eastern Catholic churches, bishops and even patriarchs are selected by the bishops' synod, then "recognized" by the Holy See.) Although he granted sui juris status to the Kerela-based Syro-Malabar hierarchy in 1992, Pope John Paul II withheld the authority to choose bishops, because of sharp divisions among the two dozen Syro-Malabar bishops, particularly regarding the liturgical patrimony of the Church.

"We depend on the (Roman) Curia for too many matters now," Cardinal Vithayathil complained. He argued that greater autonomy for the Syro-Malabor bishops' synod has become "a necessity of the times."