A Syro-Malabar Church cathedral in southern India has been reopened through a court order after police closed it following violent clashes there between rival groups over a longstanding liturgy dispute.
“We opened the church at 6 p.m. yesterday and conducted the rosary and the way of the cross,” said Father Varghese Manavalan, administrator of St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica under Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese in southern Kerala, on March 27.
“So far, everything is peaceful,” the priest told UCA News.
The March 26 court order, however, barred the parish priest from celebrating the holy Eucharist.
The court said the “vicar is directed to conduct celebrations of all sacraments except Holy Qurbana (Mass)”.
It also directed police to provide protection to the church.
The cathedral under Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese, the seat of the second largest Eastern rite Church, was initially shut down on Nov. 27, 2022, following clashes between rival worshipers.
It was reopened on Dec. 20 of the same year only to be closed again following violence inside the church on Christmas Eve.
Months later, pontifical delegate Archbishop Cyril Vasil on Aug. 14, 2023, entered the closed church with the Blessed Sacrament with a police escort and offered prayers amid protests from parishioners.
The archdiocese is currently under the direct administration of a pontifical delegate through an apostolic administrator.
Parishioners had staged several protests to reopen the church but their demand was not heeded due to the liturgy dispute in the Syro Malabar Church.
The liturgy dispute is more than five decades old but the row deepened when the Synod, the apex decision-making body, approved a uniform mode of Mass in 1999.
In August 2021, the Synod asked all of the Syro Malabar Church’s 35 dioceses in India and abroad to adopt the new uniform mode of Mass by the end of November of the same year.
Barring Ernakulam-Angamaly, other dioceses implemented the order.
The parishioners and priests in Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese want Mass with celebrants facing the people, and rejected the Synod-approved Mass, in which the celebrant faces the altar during Eucharistic prayer.
The Kerala -based Syro-Malabar Church has more than more than 5 million followers.
Credit: Source link
