<span style='color:red'>Clash of Pope with Indian Syrian Christians is centuries old...</span>
Below passages are from "Christianity in India: an historical narrative" written in 1859 by Sir John William Kaye, an East India Company army historian posted in Madras. Link to downloadable Google book.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But it is a painful and a terrible chapter of history. The first Christian settlers in India were the most unchristian of men, and it has taken more than 3 centuries to wipe away the stain cast upon Christianity, by the lives of its European professors.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the history of missions in India Francis Xavier stands out... as the one apostolic man...Beside him all his successors were mountebanks and imposters. ...
He went about his own work and the Syrian priests tended their flocks in security and peace. Before his death the Franciscan friars had endeavored silently and secretly to undermine the Malabar churches; but had restored to no acts of violence. Soon, however, the overbearing policy of Rome began openly to assert itself; and the Christians of St Thomas saw their independence threatened by the men whom they regarded as little better than idolators in religion and buccaneers in active life.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Then began the great struggle, to the history of which Gibbon has devoted two pregnant pages, and Hough more than a volume of his work. The Christians, long seated on the coast of Malabar, traced their paternity to the Apostle Paul, who "went through Syria and Cilicia confirming the churches." They looked to Syria as their spiritual home. They owned the supremacy of the Patriarch of Babylon. Of Rome and the Pope they knew nothing.
...
...
The Portuguese were scandalized at the appearance of Syrian houses of worships, which they declared to be heathen temples scarcely disguised. It is certain that Malabar Christians had never subscribed to Roman doctrine.
...
...
The inquisitors of Goa discovered that they were heretics; but they were quietely living in the enjoyment of a faith which had been vouchsafed to them a thousand years before - vouchsafed to them when Rome owned a heathen Emporer, and knew not the sterner, more capacious tyranny of a sovereign Pontiff of the Christian Church.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>But like a wolf on the fold, down came the delegates of the pontifical tyrant upon these doomed Indian Churches.... Pope appointed Don Alexis de Menezes as Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission less to make new converts than to reduce old ones to subjugation; and he flung himself into the work of persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have endeared him to Rome. </span>
Impatient of the slow success of his agents, he determined to take the staff into his own hands. Moving down to the South, with an imposing military force. There was other work to be done by this expedition than the reduction of the Syrian Churches; but the authorities of Goa saw the advantage of imparting to the movements of the Archbishop all the circumstance of official pomp and the persuasiveness of military strength.
He summoned Syrian churches to submit to his authority. The churches were under an Archdeacon, who sensible of the danger that impended over them, determined to temporize, but at the same time to show that he was prepared to resist. An escort of 3000 resolute men accompanied him on his visit to Menezes, were with difficulty restrained, on the first sight of violence.Â
But no fear of resistance could divert Menezes from his purpose; and he openly denounced the Patriarch of Babylon as a oestilent schismatic, and declared it heresy to acknowledge his supremacy. He then issued a decree forbidding all persons to acknowledge any other supremacy than that of the Roman pontiff, or to make any mention of the Syrian Patriarch in services of their Church; and, this done, he publicly excommunicated the acknowledged head of the Syrian Churches, and called upon the startled Archdeacon to sign the writ of excommunication.Â
Frightened and confused, the wretched man put his name to apostate document; and it was publicly affixed to the gates of the church.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This went on for several months. This guy will go about to the churches one by one and force the Syrians to come under his authority. He acheived it by violence, and many times by bribery too.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And finally Menezes issued a decree for a synod; and on June 20, 1599, all churches assembled at Diamper. All Syrian christians were forced to read the 'Confession of Faith'. One of the Syrian Priests, who acted as the interpreter, then read the confession in Malabar language, and the assembled multitudes repeated it after him, on their knees.Â
And, so the Syrian Christians bowed their necks to the yoke of Rome. In the course of 6 months, that ambitious and unscupulous prelate reduced the syrian churches to bondage.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Below passages are from "Christianity in India: an historical narrative" written in 1859 by Sir John William Kaye, an East India Company army historian posted in Madras. Link to downloadable Google book.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But it is a painful and a terrible chapter of history. The first Christian settlers in India were the most unchristian of men, and it has taken more than 3 centuries to wipe away the stain cast upon Christianity, by the lives of its European professors.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In the history of missions in India Francis Xavier stands out... as the one apostolic man...Beside him all his successors were mountebanks and imposters. ...
He went about his own work and the Syrian priests tended their flocks in security and peace. Before his death the Franciscan friars had endeavored silently and secretly to undermine the Malabar churches; but had restored to no acts of violence. Soon, however, the overbearing policy of Rome began openly to assert itself; and the Christians of St Thomas saw their independence threatened by the men whom they regarded as little better than idolators in religion and buccaneers in active life.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Then began the great struggle, to the history of which Gibbon has devoted two pregnant pages, and Hough more than a volume of his work. The Christians, long seated on the coast of Malabar, traced their paternity to the Apostle Paul, who "went through Syria and Cilicia confirming the churches." They looked to Syria as their spiritual home. They owned the supremacy of the Patriarch of Babylon. Of Rome and the Pope they knew nothing.
...
...
The Portuguese were scandalized at the appearance of Syrian houses of worships, which they declared to be heathen temples scarcely disguised. It is certain that Malabar Christians had never subscribed to Roman doctrine.
...
...
The inquisitors of Goa discovered that they were heretics; but they were quietely living in the enjoyment of a faith which had been vouchsafed to them a thousand years before - vouchsafed to them when Rome owned a heathen Emporer, and knew not the sterner, more capacious tyranny of a sovereign Pontiff of the Christian Church.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>But like a wolf on the fold, down came the delegates of the pontifical tyrant upon these doomed Indian Churches.... Pope appointed Don Alexis de Menezes as Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission less to make new converts than to reduce old ones to subjugation; and he flung himself into the work of persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have endeared him to Rome. </span>
Impatient of the slow success of his agents, he determined to take the staff into his own hands. Moving down to the South, with an imposing military force. There was other work to be done by this expedition than the reduction of the Syrian Churches; but the authorities of Goa saw the advantage of imparting to the movements of the Archbishop all the circumstance of official pomp and the persuasiveness of military strength.
He summoned Syrian churches to submit to his authority. The churches were under an Archdeacon, who sensible of the danger that impended over them, determined to temporize, but at the same time to show that he was prepared to resist. An escort of 3000 resolute men accompanied him on his visit to Menezes, were with difficulty restrained, on the first sight of violence.Â
But no fear of resistance could divert Menezes from his purpose; and he openly denounced the Patriarch of Babylon as a oestilent schismatic, and declared it heresy to acknowledge his supremacy. He then issued a decree forbidding all persons to acknowledge any other supremacy than that of the Roman pontiff, or to make any mention of the Syrian Patriarch in services of their Church; and, this done, he publicly excommunicated the acknowledged head of the Syrian Churches, and called upon the startled Archdeacon to sign the writ of excommunication.Â
Frightened and confused, the wretched man put his name to apostate document; and it was publicly affixed to the gates of the church.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This went on for several months. This guy will go about to the churches one by one and force the Syrians to come under his authority. He acheived it by violence, and many times by bribery too.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And finally Menezes issued a decree for a synod; and on June 20, 1599, all churches assembled at Diamper. All Syrian christians were forced to read the 'Confession of Faith'. One of the Syrian Priests, who acted as the interpreter, then read the confession in Malabar language, and the assembled multitudes repeated it after him, on their knees.Â
And, so the Syrian Christians bowed their necks to the yoke of Rome. In the course of 6 months, that ambitious and unscupulous prelate reduced the syrian churches to bondage.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->