I think that would be a good reason to have another Mass said in the church for the intentions of our Keralite parishioners. Kerala, of course, preserves a very old tradition of the founding of her Apostolic church by Saint Thomas, who had come to her on a land route through Babylon (Iraq) and Persia, and down from the Indus Valley. This is almost the beginning of the Keralite church's relations with Mesopotamia and the Chaldean patriarchates (which later supplied her with Syriac-speaking bishops until the 1400s and the interruption occasioned by the arrival of the Portuguese ships from around the horn of Africa), for Thomas had done much on his way to India, where he stayed and where he was eventually martyred, near the city of Madras, which the Indians now call Chennai.
More about him on Friday. But here's a nice picture.
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