Mary Matha Shrine is a Roman Catholic church located at Thiruvithamcode in Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu in India.
If coming from Madurai / Kanyakumari, at Thuckalay Main bus stand take a left to reach Thiruvithamcode.
The mysteries of the Holy Rosary are inscribed on the front doors of this church which help people in praying.
Contact: Church of the Ascension of our Lord (Shrine of our Lady of matha), Thiruvithamcode, Kanyakumari District – 629 174 Under the Chera dynasty the whole country was ruled over by as many as 156 petty kings.
It is said and believed that in the first century St. Thomas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, came here and preached the good news and he built a church of Our Lady here in 70 AD.
This church is today called as the "Thiruvithamcode Arappally" which is now owned and maintained by Syrian Orthodox Christian.
This historical Arappally, thus, stands as a piece of evidence to the claim that there were Christians in this Thiruvithamcode region from the first century onward.
A note that dates back to 1060 shows that interior fishermen community people from Palayam to Thittuvilai considered Thiruvithamcode as a capital place.
When in 1544, St. Francis Xavier who visited the king Rama Varma and his brother Marthanda Varma, who were then staying in the Thiruvithamcode palace, to convey the message from the Portuguese governor regarding his military help also visited this Church that was in Thiruvithamcode.
St. Francis Xavier obtained the permission to preach in the coastal village of Tamil Nadu from here.
St. John de Britto, who was doing missionary work having Madurai as the centre, visited this church in 1682, when he came to the Jesuits’ house in Pillai Thoppu.
When Devasahayam Pillai was persecuted for having accepted the Gospel, in order to humiliate him and as a sign of warning to other people, he was taken on buffalo, to various places and he was dragged through the streets of Thiruvithamcode too.
It is known from a note dating back to 1765 that professionally and culturally the villages such as Aatoor, Eraniel, Mulagumoodu, Manalikarai, Pazhayakadai, Puthenkadai, Vaaruthattu, Mekamandapam, Padmanabhapuram, Thalakuzham and Thikkanamkodu, where people of Chavalkarar community or Mukkuva community resided, were attached to Thiruvithamcode.
There is a popular belief to date that making children roll on the oil pored tomb of Fr.
Now Thiruvithamcode parish is part of the newly erected diocese Kuzhithurai and it is regarded as one of the becoming shrines of the district.
It is he who, following the Tamil cultural traditions, built the famous church having Annai as the patron in the place called Konaan Kuppam.
Once when a fisher man with his boat was caught up in a storm in the sea and there was no way out to escape, he prayed for the intercession of Annai.