Kerala govt appeals against HC order of taking over six churches

Kochi : A day after the Kerala High Court announced taking contempt action against the Chief Secretary and two District Collectors for defying the court order to take possession of six churches embroiled in the Orthodox-Jacobite Church dispute, the Kerala government on Tuesday filed an appeal at the Supreme Court against it.

The state government in its appeal petition has said that the state needs more time to comply with the order.

The Jacobite Church also has approached the apex court, while the Orthodox Church has filed a caveat that no decision should be taken by the court until they are heard.

Incidentally, it was on Thursday, that the Kerala High Court dismissed appeals filed by the state government and Jacobite Christians challenging a single-judge bench's order directing District Collectors to take possession of six churches embroiled in the Orthodox-Jacobite Church dispute.

On Friday, the Kerala High Court announced they have started contempt proceedings against the Chief Secretary and the two District Collectors under whose purview falls the six churches and they defied the orders of the High Court.

It was in August that the single-judge bench ordered the District Collectors of Ernakulam and Palakkad to take possession of six disputed churches where the obstruction persisted.

Incidentally, the apex court in its final verdict in 2017, gave the Orthodox faction the right to administer 1,100 churches and parishes under the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and said that there was no ground for the Jacobites to claim any of the churches.

A non-Catholic Christian community in Kerala, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, has two factions -- the majority Orthodox, who have their headquarters in Kottayam, and the Jacobites, who consider the Patriarch of Antioch in Beirut (Lebanon) as their supreme leader.

The community first split into Orthodox and Jacobite in 1912, but came together in Kottayam for a brief period between 1958 and 1970 following a Supreme Court ruling.

Since 1970, they have been at war over control of churches.

After decades spent in trial, the apex court gave its final verdict in 2017.

Consequent to this, the Orthodox faction has been taking control over churches until now run by the Jacobite faction.

While by now the Orthodox faction has taken over a few churches on directions from the High Court after the police were given specific instructions, in some churches, the Jacobite faction has been unrelenting.

In terms of numbers, the Orthodox Church is a much bigger entity than the Jacobite Church.