Their strict intermarriage customs are meant to preserve ancient bloodlines that date back to the fourth century in India and the Middle East, so many families in the Knanayan Syriac Orthodox church know each other, regardless of where they live.
The world, however, would learn of their rich cultural and religious heritage only after a fatal shooting at a church in the suburbs just west of New York City. The tragedy cast light on the lesser-known Christian sect of the Syriac Orthodox called the Knanaya, whose members largely hail from the South Indian coastal state of Kerala.
The close-knit group is estimated by church officials to have about 50,000 to 100,000 members worldwide.
PHOTO: AP
St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya Church in Clifton, New Jersey, was founded in 1987 for a community that began more than a decade earlier as Knanaya women came from India as exchange students in nursing and pharmacy, and stayed.
Today, some services are in English as the church fills with children of the first-generation immigrants who founded it.
Church members can trace their roots back to 72 families that traveled from the Middle East to India in 345AD to do missionary work.
“They brought the Bible to India, and the Syriac-Aramaic language, as was spoken by Jesus,” said the Reverend Thomas Abraham, who heads the congregation. “The liturgy and the Mass was celebrated in Syriac, and even now, we use it.”
Aramaic language is mixed with Malayalam, an Indian language spoken in Kerala, and Knanayans follow many of the same Orthodox traditions as the Syrian church.
But preserving bloodlines and traditions can be a challenge with a new American-born generation.
“We are losing some to intermarrying,” Abraham said. “We practice endogamy — marrying within the same community — and to be born of the Knanayan church you have to be of Knanayan parents, and once you marry outside the church, you automatically lose the bloodlines.”
But it was neither religion nor culture that cast the spotlight on the tiny community. Rather, a family argument turned tragic during service the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Joseph Pallipurath, 27, told authorities he believed church members were blocking his attempts to contact his wife, who had left him three months before. The couple was married just over a year ago in India and moved to Sacramento, California, in January. Their marriage had been arranged.
Pallipurath’s wife, Reshma James, 24, had come to New Jersey to stay with her cousin to escape what relatives said was an abusive marriage. She had even taken out a restraining order against her husband.
Witnesses say someone was trying to break up the argument between Pallipurath, his wife and her cousin, Silvy Perincheril, when Pallipurath opened fire with a handgun just as the congregation was finishing its prayers for the dead, a staple of weekly worship service.
James fell dead. Her would-be rescuer, Dennis Mallosseril, who maintained the church’s Web site, died a day later. Perincheril remains hospitalized, with a gunshot wound in her head.
Pallipurath was captured in Georgia the next day and arraigned on charges of murder, attempted murder and weapons offenses.
Word of the shooting reached the Knanayan archbishop, Mor Sevarios Kuriakose, who traveled immediately from India to New Jersey to mourn with the congregation and comfort the families of the dead.
“The shooting inside the church, it was a cold-blooded murder,” he said. “But still our people are ready to forgive that person from our heart because we’re Christians, and we follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ that teaches us you forgive your enemies.”
Archbishop Cyril Aphrem Karim of the Syriac Orthodox Church of the Eastern US, based in Teaneck, was among those who reached out to the St. Thomas community. Karim said his congregation — largely made up Christians from Syria, Lebanon and Turkey — feel a kinship with the Knanayan, who also answer to the patriarch in Damascus.
Kathleen McVey, professor of church history at the Princeton Theological Seminary, said the Knanayan claim Syriac-Jewish descent, and are among the earliest Christians, linking themselves to an apostle of Jesus.
Pallipurath’s bail was set at US$5 million.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS