{"id":6205,"date":"2005-12-21T09:25:59","date_gmt":"2005-12-21T09:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html"},"modified":"2005-12-21T09:25:59","modified_gmt":"2005-12-21T09:25:59","slug":"apostle-to-the-untouchables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html","title":{"rendered":"Apostle to the Untouchables"},"content":{"rendered":"

More on one of those approved for beatification the other day:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Born on 1 April 1891 in Ramapuram in the diocese of Palai, Kerala, Fr Augustinus Thevarparampil entered the seminary of Palai and was ordained priest on 17 December 1921, aged 30, by Bishop Mar Tommasi Kurialacherry. <\/p>\n

In February 1923, he was sent as vice parish priest to St Sebastian parish in Kadanad, but sudden serious illness forced him to leave his post to return to Ramapuran. Here, he found his future field of work among the \u201cuntouchables\u201d, the Dalits. Fr Augustinus Thevarparampil was widely known as \u201cKunjachan\u201d \u2013meaning \u201clittle priest\u201d in the Malayalam language of India \u2013 because he was short. He sought to lead marginalized and exploited people, who were full of superstitious beliefs and practices, to the Christian faith and also encouraged them to believe in themselves.<\/p>\n

To win over diffidence and prejudice, he would go to visit them, to listen to and comfort them, seeking to calm discord and to treat sick people. He knew and called each one by name and he was a great friend of children. His perseverance enabled him to overcome many difficulties, so much so, he personally baptized nearly 6,000 people. Fr Thevarparampil died on 16 October 1973, aged 82, after 52 years of priesthood and mission. He is buried in his parish church of Ramapuran, before the altar of St Augustine, which has now become a place of pilgrimage. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More on one of those approved for beatification the other day: Born on 1 April 1891 in Ramapuram in the diocese of Palai, Kerala, Fr Augustinus Thevarparampil entered the seminary of Palai and was ordained priest on 17 December 1921, aged 30, by Bishop Mar Tommasi Kurialacherry. In February 1923, he was sent as vice…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nApostle to the Untouchables - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Apostle to the Untouchables - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"More on one of those approved for beatification the other day: Born on 1 April 1891 in Ramapuram in the diocese of Palai, Kerala, Fr Augustinus Thevarparampil entered the seminary of Palai and was ordained priest on 17 December 1921, aged 30, by Bishop Mar Tommasi Kurialacherry. In February 1923, he was sent as vice…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-12-21T09:25:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Apostle to the Untouchables - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Apostle to the Untouchables - Via Media","og_description":"More on one of those approved for beatification the other day: Born on 1 April 1891 in Ramapuram in the diocese of Palai, Kerala, Fr Augustinus Thevarparampil entered the seminary of Palai and was ordained priest on 17 December 1921, aged 30, by Bishop Mar Tommasi Kurialacherry. In February 1923, he was sent as vice…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-12-21T09:25:59+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html","name":"Apostle to the Untouchables - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-12-21T09:25:59+00:00","dateModified":"2005-12-21T09:25:59+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/apostle-to-the-untouchables.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Apostle to the Untouchables"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}