Arthunkal: the church where Ayyappa’s pilgrims come to pray

Come to the Alappuzha coast between November and January and you will see something that stops you in your tracks: crowds of Hindu pilgrims dressed in the black of the Sabarimala vow, garlands at their necks, walking not toward a temple but straight into a whitewashed Catholic church beside the sea. They fold their hands before a Christian saint. Some of them kneel here to remove the sacred beads they have worn for weeks. This is Arthunkal Church, and its story is one of the loveliest in all Kerala — a friendship, the people say, between a saint and a god.

The white father

The Portuguese first raised a church on this shore in the sixteenth century. Then, in 1584, an Italian Jesuit named Fr Jacomo Fenicio became its vicar — and the people came to love him so deeply, for his gentleness and his reputation as a healer, that they gave him a name of their own: Arthunkal Veluthachan, “the fair-skinned father.” He rebuilt the church in stone and lime, and when he died in 1632 he was mourned as a saint in his own right. A few years later the church was raised again, this time turned to face west, out toward the white sand and the Arabian Sea.

The martyr from Milan

The heart of the shrine arrived in 1647: a statue of St Sebastian, the Roman soldier executed by the emperor for his Christian faith, shown pierced all over with arrows, his body bleeding. It had been carried all the way from Milan. That image of the wounded martyr became the focus of an ever-growing devotion, and Arthunkal grew into one of the great pilgrim centres of the coast — a place people came, and still come, seeking healing, some completing the last stretch on their knees in a penance called the Urulunercha.

A saint and a god called brothers

Then there is the legend that makes Arthunkal unlike anywhere else. It holds that Lord Ayyappa of Sabarimala and St Sebastian of Arthunkal were the closest of friends — so close that people of both faiths came to speak of them as brothers. And so, for generations, Ayyappa devotees returning from the forest shrine of Sabarimala have broken their journey at Arthunkal to pay their respects to the saint, many of them removing their black pilgrimage beads here in a quiet ritual that marks the end of the vow. Between November and January the church deliberately keeps its doors open to receive them. It is one of the most beautiful expressions of shared faith you will find in India.

The feast by the sea

Each January, from the 10th to the 27th, the Arthunkal Perunnal — the feast of St Sebastian — draws lakhs of pilgrims of every religion. Its great day is the 20th, and its climax a spectacular procession that carries the arrow-struck statue of the saint out from the church to the beach and back, amid fireworks, drums and prayer; devotees speak of an eagle that appears overhead each year as the saint passes. A final observance, the Ettamperunnal, closes the feast on the 27th. In 2010 the church was raised to the rank of a minor basilica.

Visiting Arthunkal

Arthunkal lies on the coast in the Cherthala area of Alappuzha district, about 40 km south of Kochi, an easy detour on any backwater or beach itinerary — and unforgettable if you can time it to the pilgrimage season or the January feast. Details are on the Arthunkal place page; more of the district is on the Alappuzha hub.