Christian History Home > Issue 87 > A Church Reborn
A Church Reborn
Catholicism emerged out of decline and disarray to become the largest Christian community in India.
Felix Wilfred | posted 7/01/2005 12:00AM
"India, your children will be the ambassadors of your salvation," said Pope Leo XIII in 1886. Pope Leo's farsighted prediction reveals a deeper assumption that has proven true again and again: No Christian tradition can thrive in India until the Indian people make it their own.
Through the work of pioneering Jesuit missionaries such as Francis Xavier, Roberto de Nobili, and Constanzo Beschi, Catholic Christianity had begun to strike its roots in Tamil Nadu, the southern part of the country, from the 16th to the 18th century. But in the late 18th century, the church entered a period of severe decline almost to the point of extinction. It was a time of religious crisis in Europe, and the suppression of the Jesuit order in 1773 deprived the mission field of workers. Without adequate leadership by local pastors, some Christians in India relapsed into former ways and some others were forced to convert to Islam.
In addition, Catholic leaders abroad were locked in an ecclesiastical quarrel that ...
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