St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral, Puthencavu is one of the important churches in South India, located at a village named Puthencavu (near Chengannur), Alappuzha district in Kerala state of India. The church is one of the oldest Christian churches in the Central Travancore region of Kerala. The people of Puthencavu depended on the old Suriyani Church in Chengannur or the church in Maramon before the establishment of this church. Due to the distance to the nearest church, Christians in the area decided to construct a church in Puthencavu itself. The Christians of Puthencavu decided to approach the Marthoma VI. During that time, the Travancore Maharaja had penalised the Marthoma VI per the request of the Dutch for the delayed payments of expenses in bringing the bishops: Mar Baselious Malprina, Mar Gregorios and Yohananon Ramban from Sheema during the times of Mar Thoma V. The Travancore government confiscated the metropolitan bishop's items and the goods and movable properties of the Niranam Church. It is believed that this church bell from Niranam Church is that which hangs even today on the East Fort gate of Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram. It is legendarily believed that the Tharakans and the Christians in Puthencavu saved the arrest of the metropolitan bishop by giving the money which was gathered for the construction of the church. The excess money after settling this was believed to be the source of vattipanam later, as follows: soon after becoming the Metropolitan Mar Thoma VII continued to discuss with Col. Macaulay, the British resident, and the church decided to deposit as loan in perpetuity a sum of 3000 Poovarahan (a poovarahan, known as Star Pagoda, had a market value of Rs. 10300). The deposit was handed over to Col. Maccaulay on 1 December 1808 and he issued the receipt. The agreement stipulated that interest should be paid to the Malankara Metropolitan. This deposit is now known as Vattipanam. Later when there was more than one metropolitan in the Malankara Church, it became necessary to decide the rightful authority to receive the interest. So the government convened meetings with the church leaders and according to their decision issued proclamations authorizing that person to be the metropolitan to receive the interest. This resulted in several court cases for several years until 1958. More information...
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