Later, when the Western missionaries reached India, they accused this community of practicing Nestorianism, a heresy that separates Christ's divinity from his human nature.

The East Syriac diocese of India was elevated as a metropolitan province in the eighth century by Patriarch Ishoyab III.

He visited Malabar, touching at Pandarani (20 m. north of Calicut), at Cranganore, and at Kulam or Quilon, proceeding thence, apparently, to Ceylon and to the shrine of St Thomas at Maylapur near Madras.

Jordanus is known for his 1329 "Mirabilia" describing the marvels of the East: he furnished the best account of Indian regions and the Christians, the products, climate, manners, customs, fauna and flora given by any European in the Middle Ages – superior even to Marco Polo's.

In 1329 Pope John XXII (in captivity at Avignon) erected Quilon as the first Diocese in the whole Indies as suffragan to the Archdiocese of Sultany in Persia, through the decree "Romanus Pontifix" dated 9 August 1329.

By a separate Bull "Venerabili Fratri Jordano", the same Pope, on 21 August 1329 appointed the French Dominican friar Jordanus Catalani de Severac (OP) as the first Bishop of Quilon.

(Copies of the Orders and the related letters issued by Pope John XXII to Bishop Jordanus Catalani (OP) and to the diocese of Quilon are documented and preserved in the diocesan archives).

In 1347, Giovanni de Marignolli visited the shrine of St Thomas near the modern Madras, and then proceeded to what he calls the kingdom of Saba, and identifies with the Sheba of Scripture, but which seems from various particulars to have been Java.

This massive blow to Christendom spurred the Age of Discovery as Europeans were seeking alternative routes east by sea along with the goal of forging alliances with pre-existing Christian nations.

[16] During the second expedition, the Portuguese fleet comprising 13 ships and 18 priests, under Captain Pedro Álvares Cabral, anchored at Cochin on 26 November 1500.

Dom Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese Viceroy, got permission from the Kochi Raja to build two church edifices – namely Santa Cruz Basilica (founded 1505) and St. Francis Church (founded 1506) using stones and mortar which was unheard of at that time as the local prejudices were against such a structure for any purpose other than a royal palace or a temple.

On 12 June 1514, Cochin, Goa& Bombay-Bassein became the prominent fields of missionary activity, under the newly created Diocese of Funchal in Madeira.

This created an episcopal see – suffragan to Funchal, with a jurisdiction extending potentially over all past and future conquests from the Cape of Good Hope to China.

In 1545, Saint Francis Xavier visited this church, prayed in the Tomb of St. Thomas and stayed for about one year before his Apostolic trip to China.

This church was later elevated to the status of a cathedral in 1606 by Pope Paul V, with the inauguration of the Diocese of Saint Thomas of Mylapore at the request of Portuguese King.

[18] Saint Francis Xavier, in a 1545 letter to John III of Portugal, requested the Goan Inquisition but the tribunal was set up only in 1560.

The Saint Thomas Christians were pressured to acknowledge the authority of the Pope and most of them eventually accepted the Catholic faith, but a part of them switched to West Syriac Rite.

[21] Resentment of these measures led some part of the community to join the Archdeacon Thomas, in swearing never to submit to the Portuguese or to accept Jesuits as their masters in the Coonan Cross Oath in 1653.

Conversions were also carried out on the eastern coasts at San Thome of Mylapore and as far as Portuguese Chittagong, and beyond Bengal in the East Indies.

Still, even with these efforts, the greater part even of the coast line was by no means fully worked, and many vast tracts of the interior northwards were practically untouched.

[22] The Portuguese spread the Catholic faith in Goa, then in Cape Comorin, inland districts of Madurai and the western coast of Bassein, Salcette, Bombay, Karanja, and Chaul.

[24] Finally in 1886 another concordat was established, and at the same time the whole country was divided into ecclesiastical provinces, and certain portions of territory, withdrawn in 1838, were restored to the jurisdiction of the Portuguese sees.

In Portuguese India, for instance, Saint Francis Xavier and his fellow missionaries were especially careful to help the local charitable institutions by tending to the sick, both spiritually and physically, and performing other works of mercy.

[29] Education has become the major priority for the Church in India in recent years with nearly 60% of the Catholic schools situated in rural areas.