Chaldean Syrian Church

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Chaldean Syrian Church is the name used for the Assyrian Church of the East in India. It is one of several groups of Saint Thomas Christians tracing their origins to St. Thomas the Apostle who, according to tradition, came to India in AD 52.

For many generations until the 16th century, the Christians of India were accustomed to receive their bishops from the Church of the East. Following the Portuguese colonization of several coastal regions of India, Christians in Malabar were allied with the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning in the 17th century, ecclesiastically conservative groups began to seek leadership from the Syrian Orthodox Church.

The modern history of the Church of the East in India dates to the decades after 1814 when leading Christians in Thrissur, failing in their own attempt to gain a bishop from the Syrian Orthodox Church began to seek to have a bishop ordained by the Catholicos Patriarch of the Church of the East in Qochanis. The priest Anthony Thondonatta was consecrated bishop as Mar Abdisho in 1862 in Qochanis, though he did not begin functioning as Metropolitan in India until 1882. Since the end of the 19th century the church of the East in India has become well established, with a number of congregations. Their publishing arm, Mar Narsai Press, prints several liturgcal books used throughout the Church of the East. The present Metropolitan, Mar Aprem Mooken (ordained in 1968), is headquartered in Trichur and is a noted author.