India’s top court tells warring church factions to share properties
Move seen as bid to bring both sides in Syrian Church of Antioch property row together
Updated: December 06, 2024 09:46 AM GMT
India’s top court has told the warring factions in the Oriental Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch to share all public amenities at disputed Church properties in a southern state until a solution to the row can be found.
The government in Kerala is finding it difficult to implement a 2017 apex court order that awarded disputed churches to the Orthodox faction due to stiff opposition from the Jacobite camp, a breakaway faction of the Damascus-based Church.
While hearing a contempt petition against the communist-led state government and the Jacobite faction, a division bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan of the Supreme Court on Dec. 3 told the warring factions to share among themselves all public amenities in the disputed church compounds without discrimination.
The current stalemate concerns six disputed churches located in the state’s Ernakulam and Palakkad districts. These churches are under the control of the Jacobite faction of the Oriental Church, which has nearly 2 million followers in Kerala.
“All public facilities like burial grounds, schools, hospitals, etc on church premises shall continue to be availed by everyone, including Catholics,” the judges said in the order.
Though it is an interim order, “it is significant as the court wanted to see both sides come together,” as sharing the amenities was not there in the 2017 order,” observed Biju Oommen, secretary of the Orthodox Church Association.
He said they would consult their lawyers before sharing the amenities.
“The interim order will force the rival faction to comply with the 2017 order,” Oommen told UCA News on Dec.5.
The Orthodox side had conducted many protests, such as displaying the dead bodies of its members because the Jacobite faction refused to bury them in the Church’s cemeteries, forcing the state government to issue the Kerala Right to Burial of Corpse in Christian (Malankara Orthodox-Jacobite) Cemeteries Act in 2020.
“Yes, as per the order, we will have to hand over the churches and we do not know what to do,” a senior Jacobite member, who did not want to be named, told UCA News.
The court has adjourned the case until Dec. 17.
In its 2017 order, the apex court named the Orthodox side as the legal heir of the Church’s temporal properties based on a 1934 pact.
Over 1,100 churches under the control of the Jacobites will have to be handed over to the Orthodox camp as per the order. So far, the Orthodox side has been successful in taking control of close to 60 churches with police help.
The Orthodox faction’s supreme head is based in Kerala, while the Jacobites owe their allegiance to the patriarch of Antioch.
The Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch in Kerala witnessed a split in 1911. In 1934, they came together and agreed on a constitution and elected the Catholicos of the East, based in Kerala, as their common head.
However, in 1973, they split again, each faction taking over properties in areas where they were numerically strong.
The Syrian Church of Antioch was based in Turkey. After World War I, the patriarchate was transferred to Homs in Syria in 1933. In 1959, it was moved to Damascus.
