June 29, 2012: In a historic move, Pope Benedict XVI yesterday put two Indian Catholic
laymen on a fast track to sainthood. The Pontiff recognized Devasahayam Pillai, an
18th century Hindu convert to Catholicism in Tamil Nadu, as a martyr for faith and
made him a venerable, the second stage in the Catholic Church’s four-tier canonization
process.
During a private audience with Cardinal Angelo Amato S.D.B., prefect
of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Pope authorised the Congregation
to promulgate the the decrees of Miracles, martyrdom and heroic virtues of many servants
of God from all over the world.
On the same day, the pope also named Puthenparampil
Thommachan of Kerala state, as a Servant of God, the initial stage where Rome gives
green signal to start the process.
Pillai and Thommachan are the only lay people
from India being considered for sainthood. Six nuns and priests have reached the third
stage, where a candidate is declared blessed. Only two Indians have reached sainthood
– Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception, a Franciscan Clarist nun who died in 1946
aged 36, and Gonsalo Garcia, who was martyred in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1957 at the age
of 40.
Pillai, according to the Church records, was executed in 1752 for refusing
to abandon his new faith. He was killed at a place which is now under Kottar diocese
Kanniyakumari district that initiated his canonization cause in 1984. To speed up
the process, the diocese in 1990 sent to Rome the case of a lame Hindu boy, who walked
after seeing a vision of Pillai.
In a rare gesture ten years ago, the Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of India endorsed his canonization cause, the first official attempt
to have an Indian layperson declared a saint. It was also the first time the bishops’
conference directly took up a canonization cause.
The other candidate for sainthood,
Thommachan, was the father of two in Changanacherry archdiocese and was known as the
Kerala Assisi for popularizing the Franciscan Third Order in Kerala. He died in 1908
at the age 72. He began leading a life of piety at the age of 28 and gathered a group
of lay people who prayed for sinners and engaged in charitable works.