Kerala (UCAN): Some priests in laypeople in the troubled Syro-Malabar Archdiocese of Ernakulam-Angamaly in Kerala, India, decided to ignore Bishop Bosco Puthur, the apostolic administrator, and the newly appointed members of the curia over a protracted liturgy dispute [Sunday Examiner, June 30].
“We will not cooperate with them,” said Father Jose Vailikodath, spokesperson of a group priests calling themselves the Archdiocesan Protection Committee.
The statement was made on October 9, hours after Bishop Puthur and the curia members, escorted by police, entered the Major Archbishop’s House. The police had to evict two priests and some laypeople who were squatting in protest against the bishop’s supposed refusal to ordain eight deacons which they claim violates a July 2024 agreement to settle the archdiocese’s decades-long liturgy dispute.
Bishop Puthur stressed that he would not ordain the deacons until they give a written undertaking to celebrate the official Mass approved by the Church’s Synod of Bishops.
Syro-Malabar Church spokesperson, Father Antony Vadakkekara, said the deacons will be “ordained once they give a written undertaking of obedience as is the case of other deacons in other dioceses.”
“We will not allow either [Bishop] Puthur nor the new curia members to enter into any Church or archdiocesan institutions within the archdiocese,” Riju Kanjookaran, spokesperson of Archdiocesan Movement for Transparency, the group of priests, religious and lay people that spearheaded the three-year-long protest to retain their traditional Mass, said.
Most archdiocesan priests refuse to follow the rubrics of the official Mass, which ask them to turn to the altar during Eucharistic prayer.
The dispute over liturgy was flared up in 2021 when the Synod of Bishops ordered all dioceses to adopt the Synod-approved Mass from November 2021.
The Archdiocese of Ernakulum-Angamaly is the only diocese in the Syor-Malabar Church in non-compliance. The issue was amicably settled in July 2024, and the deacons’ ordination was fixed in October of this year.
In December 2023, Pope Francis told those in protest to “restore communion; remain in the Catholic Church.”
Describing what happens when a person excommunicates themselves, the pope told them: “Don’t force the competent Church authority to acknowledge that you have left the Church because you are no longer in communion with your pastors and with the successor of the Apostle Peter, who is called to confirm all the brothers and sisters in the faith and keep them in the unity of the Church.”
