The election of Bishop Raphael Thattil as the Syro-Malabar Church leader has brought high hopes for its members, especially the Catholics in the troubled Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese.
“I am sure he will listen to the sane voices on the controversies concerning the Syro-Malabar Church,” says Capuchin Father Suresh Mathew, former editor of Indian Currents weekly who sees in the new major archbishop “a good shepherd with the smell of the sheep” as he was always seen with the people in the peripheries.
Father Mathew, a member of the Syro-Malabar Church now based in the northern Indian state of Punjab, says the new major archbishop’s success as an administrator will “depend on his capacity to accommodate diversities. His pastoral experience in the mission will be an added asset to him.”
Among those welcoming the new major archbishop are the Almaya Munnetam (laity front) and the Archdiocesan Protection Committee of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese.
“The faithful and priests of the Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese are looking forward to the new Major Archbishop with hope,” says Riju Kanjookaren, spokesperson of the laity front that is involved in the liturgical dispute, a vexing problem for the larger of the two Oriental Catholic rites in India.
A statement from the laity front sees “a pointer to the future” in the new major archbishop’s opening statement that the Church is not only for bishops, but for everyone – the faithful, priests and the religious.
“The entire Ernakulam-Angamaly archdiocese listened with great hope to the new leader’s explanation that synodality is walking with and listening to the faithful and priests. “We also felt assured when he said he would continue to be the same priest and the bishop we are familiar with,” the statement added.
Therefore, the laity front expects the new leader to resolve the problems in the archdiocese, as a first priority after his installation on January 11.