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Bharananganam, Tomb of St. Alphonsa |
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Name: |
Bharananganam, Tomb of St. Alphonsa | |||||||||||||
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Estd: |
20th Century | ||||||||||||||
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Feast Day: |
28-Jul | ||||||||||||||
| E-mail: | rector@alphonsa.net | ||||||||||||||
Website: |
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| Telephone (O) | +91 4822-237144 / 236244 | ||||||||||||||
| Contact: St. Alphonsa Bharananganam Post! Kottayam Dist | |||||||||||||||
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History |
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| Bharananganam, where St. Alphonsa lived and died, is a quiet village some 33 k.m. to the east of Kottayam, in south central Kerala. Saint Alphonsa Muttathupadathu, F.C.C., or Saint Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception (19 August 1910 – 28 July 1946) was a Syro-Malabar Catholic Franciscan Religious Sister who is honored as a saint.Â
She is the first person of Indian origin to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church and the first canonized saint of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. The crystalline waters of the Meenachil river girdle it on three sides. One of the ancient centres of Christianity in Kerala, Bharananganam is dominated by its millennium old Forane church. The clarist convent where Blessed Alphonsa lived and died is only a stone's throw away from the church; some two hundred metres to the north is the Mortuary Chapel inside which is the Tomb of  Blessed Alphonsa. The Alphonsa Museum, which houses hundreds of exhibits associated with the life of blessed Alphonsa, is situated in the Chapel compound. The  two storey structure in front of the chapel was originally the Papal podium at  Kottayam during the beatification ceremony on 8th Feb.1986. A flight of steps  leads to the stadium below and on either side of these steps one can see a beautifully laid out terraced garden, one of the very best of its kind in Kerala. |
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