Archbishop Geevaghese Mar Ivanios, the first head of the Syro-Malankara Church, advanced on the sainthood path on March 14, 2024 when Pope Francis elevated him as a Venerable.
Archbishop Ivanios, who is known as the Newman of the East, is currently a Servant of God, the first stage in the four-phase canonization process. A statement from the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints says the Pope has accepted the heroic virtues of the archbishop, who founded the Order of the Imitation of Christ, also known as Bethany Ashram, for men, and the Sisters of the Imitation of Christ, (Bethany Madhom) for women. The archbishop died July 15, 1953, aged 70, in Thiruvananthapuram, capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala. Archbishop Ivanios was declared a Servant of God in 2007.
Archbishop Ivanios led a spiritual move-ment in the Syrian Orthodox Church that was received into full communion with the Catholic Church on September 20, 1930. He is thus considered the father of the Syro-Malankara Church, one of the 23 Eastern Churches in communion with Rome.
The Malankara Church sees a parallel between the “Reunion Movement” of the 1920s and the Oxford Movement of the 1830s led by Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), who is now a saint. Like Cardinal Newman, Archbishop Ivanios was part of a broader grouping that sought to discover the sources of unity in their own traditions, Anglican and Orthodox. When the time came, though, it was not a corporate unity that was possible but an individual conversion.
The 1920s saw a “Reunion Movement” in the Malankara Orthodox Church, and Mar Ivanios, who took that name upon being consecrated a bishop, was appointed to lead it. The movement towards corporate unity with Rome faltered, and Mar Ivanios found himself increasingly alone. In 1930, he and four others – a bishop, a priest, a deacon and a layman – entered into full communion with Rome.