St Thomas the Apostle

A brief history of St Thomas for y'all. The story really starts 500 years before he was born, when a shipwreck stranded a large group of Jewish traders on the western coast of India. They weren't able to return to Israel, and founded a community that grew to be very extensive by the time of Jesus (and still exists today). When Jesus died, most of the Apostles traveled to various Jewish communities of the known world to spread the new Gospel to the Jews. Thomas chose to travel to southern India. He wasn't the only one to go to India, as Bartholomew traveled to northwest India breifly and then went to Armenia. Thomas first arrived in India in Kodungallur in 52 AD and began to spread the gospel. He managed to survive for 20 years before being killed in Chennai on what is now called St Thomas Mount. He was stabbed in the back with a lance, which is a better fate than some other Apostles suffered. His remains were said to be buried near the beach in Chennai, but the history is somewhat sketchy about that. Nonetheless, there used to be a shrine that was where the San Thome Basilica now stands. The St Thomas Christians believed that his remains were in that shrine. There are also claims that his remains were removed and taken to Edessa, but Thomas's spiritual descendents dispute that.

Regardless of where his remains actually are, Thomas did leave behind a sizeable community of Christians, some descendents of which still exist today. Their existence was well documented by Marco Polo and Vasco de Gamma. In the 16th Century, however, most of the St Thomas Christains were forcibly converted to Catholicism by Portugese invaders. And today, most of the Christains of Chennai are still Catholics. The forcible conversions were necessary, of course, because the St Thomas Christians represented a threat to the Catholic Church's claim to be the only true form of Christianity. It was an especially dangerous issue because the St Thomas Christians were actually converted by an Apostle. So the church at the time even made efforts to claim that St Thomas never even made it to Southern India, thus discrediting the St Thomas Chistians' claims. During Pope John Paul II's tenure, the Catholic Church finally decided that Thomas's remains really were at what is now the San Thome Basilica. But the current Pope has once again disputed this. As you might expect, the Catholics here in India aren't very happy with the new Pope and have ignored his reassessment.