Archbishop Andrews Thazhath, the administrator of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese, is an outsider and must go out of the archbihop’s house, Almaya Munnettam, a lay people’s group in the archdiocese, has said. It was reacting to a letter from the archbishop against the ‘Quest for Justice’ campaign, launched by a group of priests in the archdiocese.
The lay people’s group alleged that Archbishop Thazhath tried to engineer trouble on the first Sunday of Advent at the St. Mary’s Basilica Cathedral by using, what the group called, “goons from other dioceses”. “He is trying to create trouble again,” alleged Riju Kanjookkaran of the Munnettam. He said the campaign against the archdiocesan administrator would be intensified in the coming days.
Archbishop Thazhath was trying to challenge the members of the archdiocese as well as its priests and to impose his own agenda on the archdiocese, said the group. It wants him to convey the stand taken by it to the Vatican clearly and to accept the Mass system currently followed in the archdiocese as a liturgical variant.
The Athiroopatha Samrakshana Samithi, a council of priests, has said that the archbishop had no moral authority to continue in the administration of the archdiocese. Senior priest Father Jose Vailikodath said in a statement on Monday that answers were needed to the questions raised by those protesting against the archdiocesan administrator. Father Vailikodath also alleged that even those who supported the archbishop initially were at present trying to denounce him for his failures.
