Mar Raphael Thattil is new major archbishop of Syro-Malabar Church

A secret voting was held among the bishops at the Synod on Tuesday and Thattil, who would turn 68 this April, got majority votes.

The Kerala-based Church has 65 bishops, including bishops emeriti. In the Synod, in which all bishops are members, only those below the age of 80 have voting rights. Presently, 53 bishops in the Church are below the age of 80.

At present, there are three other archbishops in the Syro-Malabar Church in Kerala, but the mantle to lead to Church fell on the bishop, who has been heading a diocese of migrants outside Kerala.

Mar Thattil, who belonged to the Archdiocese of Thrissur, has been a bishop since 2010. He was first appointed as the auxiliary bishop of the Thrissur archdiocese. He is the first bishop of the Shamshabad diocese, which was formed in 2018 to look after Catholic migrants across the country.

The diocese has jurisdiction over Syro-Malabar Catholics in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, North India, Central India, and Northeast India.

Resignation of Cardinal George Alencherry

The new major archbishop is elected at a time when the Catholic Church in Kerala is witnessing one of its worst periods.

The election of the new major archbishop, from among the bishops of the Church, was necessitated after last month’s resignation of Cardinal George Alencherry, who was forced to exit from the highest office in the Kerala Church in the wake of the protests over introducing a uniform way of offering Mass and a dubious land deal.

The Archdiocese of Ernakulam, which is the seat of the major archbishop of the Church, is divided over offering the Mass. The Cathedral Church of the major archbishop has remained closed since December 2022 due to violent disputes over offering the Mass.

Alencherry, who headed the Church since 2011, was forced to quit as the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Ernakulam in 2019. In the Church, the Cardinal also holds the charge of archbishop of Ernakulam.

In 2017, Alencherry had faced a land scam allegation which reportedly led to a loss of Rs 90 crore for the archdiocese, as per an internal committee. Subsequently, Alencherry had come under the scanner of central agencies such as the Income Tax (I-T) Department and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Even after being removed as the archbishop of Ernakulam, Alencherry had continued as the head of the Syro-Malabar Church.

The decision was announced by Alencherry in Kochi in a press conference – an unprecedented departure from the tradition in the Church where such crucial decisions are made public at a meeting of bishops. He said he was stepping down on account of health grounds, and his request to quit the post has been pending with the Vatican since 2019.