ABSTRACT
The revival of St. Thomas in Chennai represents a uniquely modern evangelization venture within the greater Catholic mission in India. In 1999, Pope John Paul II delivered his exhortation Ecclesia in Asia in New Delhi, India, in order to publically re-affirm the Catholic Church’s goal to missionize Asia. He stated:
With the Church throughout the world, the Church in Asia will cross the threshold of the Third Christian Millennium marveling at all that God has worked from those beginnings until now, and strong in the knowledge that “just as in the first millennium the Cross was planted on the soil of Europe, and in the second on that of the Americas and Africa, we can pray that in the Third Christian Millennium a great harvest of faith [emphasis in original] will be reaped in this vast and vital continent.”1
