The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (Orthodox group) has issued a warning against “attempts being made to alienate or/and to create third party rights, title and interests in the properties owned by the Malankara Orthodox Church and its constituent parish churches illegally in pursuance of a criminal conspiracy to thwart the judgements, orders and directions” of the Supreme Court of India and “the Constitution of the Malankara Orthodox Church”.
A public notice issued on Sunday by the Orthodox group said that the Supreme Court, through its verdict on July 3, 2017, had conclusively settled the century-old dispute between the Jacobite (Patriarch group) and Orthodox groups of the Malankara church and that the court ruling was the law of the land as under article 141 of the Constitution of India.
Trust
The public notice said that the Malankara church was a trust in which the properties were vested.
Though individual members might move out of the church they could not take the properties out of the ambit of the 1934 constitution. It is also not possible to create a parallel system within the Malankara church under the guise of spiritual supremacy of the Patriarch, the notice said.
Anyone was entitled to the right to leave the church in keeping with the right to be a member or not of an association but the parish assemblies of church by majority or otherwise could not decide to move church out of the Malankara Church, the notice added.
