Deeply inspired by liberation theology, which preached the liberation of the oppressed in 1960s Latin America, this Catholic priest in the southern state of Kerala in India finds himself drawn to those who struggle – in joining their struggles, he becomes “otherwise” to superiors in the Syro-Malabar church.
Rev Fr Augustine Vattoli of the Syro-Malabar church of India offers this as a personal introduction: “I am a priest today. I don’t know if I will still be one tomorrow.” Priesthood sits precariously on him as he treads his own path. The word “catholic” means universal, comprehensive. The Catholic Church, however, has not always lived up to that meaning of its name.
In July 2026, Pope Leo XIV excommunicated the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), a group of priests who hold on to the Roman Missal, the book containing the prescribed prayers and chants for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the Roman rite. The Second Vatican Council issued revised liturgical texts in 1969 that replaced the earlier Missal. The SSPX did not adapt to the changed celebration of the Eucharist. The excommunication of July 2026 occurred after the SSPX consecrated four bishops in defiance of Rome. SSPX is currently appealing that excommunication. The Catholic Church is meant to be broad, liberal, comprehensive. In recent decades, however, its character appears to be changing.
Back in Kerala, India, Fr Vattoli remains a priest in the Syro-Malabar church. This is a sui iuris (self-rule) Eastern Catholic church that governs itself with its own law and traditions, while remaining within the fold of the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome.
There are church leaders swindling the community, and prayerful Christians cannot bring themselves to question them. There is a former bishop accused of rape, and devout Christians cannot extend themselves or show solidarity with the Catholic nun the former bishop is accused of abusing. It is as if the mass of Christians feel they cannot correct a former bishop; that corruption within the church is not something they can prevent. They seem scared even to raise their voice in protest.
The foundation of the Syro-Malabar church is traced to St Thomas, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ. Historianstheorize that the saint travelled on a spice-trading ship and arrived at Kodungaloor (Cranganore) on the Malabar coast in 52 AD. He was martyred 20 years later on the Coromandel, the eastern coast of peninsular India, after travelling and preaching Christ to the people he met. In 1964, India issued a postage stamp with an image of St Thomas.
St Thomas is believed to have been speared to death by people roused to violence by his preaching of Christ. 2000 years later, that message of Christ, lived truthfully, can still elicit reactions not so peaceful.
About a decade ago, Vattoli was part of a group of church attendees protesting the US$10 million loss incurred by the Syro-Malabar church in the sale of prime parcels of land in Kochi city at rates far below prevailing market rates. Land was sold to raise funds to pay back a huge loan the church had incurred while constructing a medical college. There were calls for the resignation of the head of the Syro-Malabar church at that time, Cardinal Mar George Alencherry. The church, under pressure, admitted in a circular of December 2017 that the matter had been dealt with opaquely. The state government later submitted in the Supreme Court that the cardinal had done no wrong. The matter was thus laid to rest, but questions about how such a transaction could have occurred at all remain.
These days, Vattoli stands stoutly behind Sr Ranit, the Catholic nun fighting a legal battle for justice after Franco, the former bishop of Jalandhar in Punjab, allegedly forced himself on her. A trial court acquitted the bishop, on January 14, 2022, on grounds of “lack of evidence.”
Sr Ranit has now been interviewed in the media. Indian law prohibits media outlets from identifying sexual abuse survivors, but Sr Ranit has allowed her name and image to circulate, asserting that shame belongs with the perpetrator, not the survivor. The acquittal of Franco is set to be challenged in the Kerala High Court, the highest court in the state. Vattoli is the only priest to support this nun openly. He is instrumental in bringing people together and engaging lawyers who might otherwise have charged higher fees.
Trials typically wind long years through India’s judicial system. In India, rape is also a weapon of caste, communal, or patriarchal assertion. In August 2022, 11 Hindu men sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted in the gang-rape of a Muslim woman in the 2002 riots in the state of Gujarat were released from jail on the basis of the remission policy of the state government. Bilkis Bano, the survivor, was devastated that they were let off. She was 21 years old and five months pregnant when the rape occurred in 2002; seven members of her family were killed by the mob.
Far from contrition, the 11 emerged to the welcome accorded to national heroes, garlanded by supporters of the Hindu nationalist organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad. In January 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that the Gujarat government did not have jurisdiction to entertain the application for remission and ordered the convicts back to jail.
Meanwhile, Franco remains Bishop Emeritus and continues to lead people in prayers – he even has all-night retreats at Kottayam in Kerala, attended by women too.
Rev Fr Vattoli is also pursuing justice for two minor girls from a Dalit (low caste; the word means oppressed) family in Palakkad, Kerala, whose alleged sexual abuse and murder in 2017 is still wending its way through the court system. The girls were both found hanging in their single-room home – the body of the 13-year-old was found hanging on January 13, 2017; on March 4 that year, her sister, only nine years old, was found hanging in the same room.
When the matter reached a special court, all accused were acquitted. There were four adults and one minor. In the course of investigation, two of the accused took their own lives.
The police blamed the parents of the girls for allowing sexual abuse, and claimed the girls hanged themselves. The parents alleged that the police were attempting to protect the accused. The parents, police claimed, abetted the crime and destroyed evidence. The Central Bureau of Investigation, which probed this matter on instructions from the High Court, named the parents as accused, and the parents approached the court seeking protection from arrest. (This is the situation as of January 2025; there is no legal update after that.)
Fr Vattoli was joined by other social activists in filing a Public Interest Litigation in the Kerala High Court over the suspicious deaths of 28 children over 10 years from one district of the state, Palakkad. All the children were found hanging, and police had closed the cases considering them suicide. However, post-mortem reports showed injuries indicating sexual abuse. The activists thought it strange that police concluded that children, all from poor and marginal families and some as young as nine years old, had taken their own lives. There were grounds for suspicion that the hangings were staged.
In September 2025, Fr Vattoli resigned his duties as parish priest. His resignation came as the Syro-Malabar church in Kerala was roiled by the question of which way the priest must face while praying the Holy Mass – towards the people, his congregation; or towards the altar, in which case he would pray with his back to the people, a posture called ad orientem, towards the east. Ad orientem was the historical posture for the priest at liturgy in the Syro-Malabar church – it symbolized the priest leading people in prayer.
After the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, many Western churches adopted the practice of the priest facing the congregation throughout the mass. Some parishes in the Syro Malabar church too accepted this, even as others stuck to the historical posture, and soon both ways of worship existed within the same church – a move to standardize this caused deep division within the church, and ultimately settled in 2025 when a compromise was reached.
“I joined the seminary to train to become a priest at only 16 years old. Even in the early years of my training, I could see that we were being trained in insulation from the world around us. Just beyond the boundary wall of the seminary in Chennai (the city then called Madras) was a slum. There are slum residents who used the boundary wall of the seminary as their home’s wall. Even so, to those of us at the seminary, there was no connection with life in the slum,” says Fr Vattoli.
Entry into the seminary was entry into luxury. “We had our timetable quite set – a bell rang to announce the time for prayer, it rang again to announce it was time for our meals, the bell told us it was time for bed.” There was no want, no financial trouble to worry about. “Even my own siblings had messier lives. In contrast, our lives in the seminary were orderly, neatly punctuated by that bell,” Vattoli says.
Insulation from the messiness of ordinary life comes with its own problems — priests exaggerate the insignificant and set much store by issues like which way to face at Holy Mass. “Nowhere in the Bible is there any mention of which way Jesus turned in prayer. When there are no real issues in the lives of priests, these become the issues,” Vattoli says.
It is pertinent to mention that even though Vattoli no longer holds charge of a parish, he remains a priest and receives a monthly stipend.
“Do you pray?” I asked. “No,” said the Catholic priest, offering an elaborate explanation: “In the Bible, Christ himself gave his disciples the Our Father prayer when they asked him how to pray – he did not mandate prayer. He healed the sick, he cured the blind; he worked to relieve the oppressed. And he did retreat into the desert and contemplate, but he did not insist on prayer. It appears to me that the most prayerful Christians are also passive. Prayer appears to make them fearful or voiceless. There are church leaders swindling the community, and prayerful Christians cannot bring themselves to question them. There is a former bishop accused of rape, and devout Christians cannot extend themselves or show solidarity with the Catholic nun the former bishop is accused of abusing. It is as if the mass of Christians feel they cannot correct a former bishop; that corruption within the church is not something they can prevent. They seem scared even to raise their voice in protest. I find devout and prayerful people often untrustworthy. I offer the mass, as a Catholic priest. But when it comes to living out lives in the secular world, I urge action as if God does not exist.”
Vattoli explained: “When Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,’ he meant complete, unconditional forgiveness – not fear and submission. We must each interpret scripture for ourselves; the course of our lives is a reflection of our philosophy.”
