Saints of Kerala and India
The men and women of this land whom the Church has declared saints. Five of them are from Kerala, and their shrines at Bharananganam, Mannanam, Ollur, Kuzhikkattussery and Kottar are places our families have prayed at for generations.
Saints of Kerala
Four Syro-Malabar religious and one Latin-rite layman, canonised between 2008 and 2022.
St Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception
A Franciscan Clarist sister from Kottayam whose short life was marked by illness borne quietly, and whose tomb at Bharananganam draws pilgrims from across India.
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St Kuriakose Elias Chavara
Priest, founder of the first indigenous religious congregations in Kerala, and the man behind the rule that every parish should run a school.
Read the historySt Euphrasia Eluvathingal
A Carmelite sister of Thrissur who spent fifty years in the same convent and became known across the district as a woman to whom people brought their troubles.
Read the historySt Mariam Thresia Chiramel Mankidiyan
She built her work around the family home: visiting the sick, sitting with the dying, and founding a congregation whose purpose was the welfare of families.
Read the historySt Devasahayam Pillai
A palace official of Travancore who was baptised, refused to recant, and was shot after three years of imprisonment. He is the first Indian layman declared a saint.
Read the historySaints of the wider Indian Church
The apostle whose mission began it, the first saint born on Indian soil, and those whose work here is remembered far beyond it.
St Thomas the Apostle
One of the twelve, and by the constant tradition of the Saint Thomas Christians the apostle who brought the faith to the Malabar coast in AD 52.
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St Joseph Vaz
Born in Goa, he entered Dutch-ruled Ceylon in disguise when Catholic priests were banned, and spent twenty-four years rebuilding the Church there.
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St Gonsalo Garcia
Born near Mumbai to a Portuguese father and an Indian mother, he was crucified at Nagasaki with twenty-five companions and is the first person born in India to be canonised.
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St Francis Xavier
A founding Jesuit whose missions ran from Goa to the Fishery Coast, Malacca and Japan, and whose remains are enshrined in Old Goa.
Read the historySt Teresa of Calcutta
She came to India at eighteen to teach, left the classroom for the streets of Calcutta, and built an order that now works in more than a hundred countries.
Read the historyDates of birth, death, beatification and canonisation are given as recorded by the Holy See. Where a detail rests on tradition rather than documentation, as with the mission of St Thomas, the page says so.