The investiture started with the leading of Mar Alencherry and 21 others who were elevated as Cardinals along with him to the stage of the ceremony on Saturday afternoon, which was followed by their ornamenting with the red cap and ring by the Pope. After that, he and the other Cardinal-designates were given their orders of appointment.
The newly consecrated Cardinal would participate in a Holy Mass with the Pope at the St Peter’s Basilica on Sunday morning. The Keralites in Rome would give a grand reception to Cardinal Alencherry on Sunday afternoon. He would return to India after attending an Ecumenical conference in Israel.
The decision to elevate him as Cardinal was announced by Vatican on January 6. He was elected as Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church on May 26, 2011 following the death of Cardinal Mar Varkey Vithayathil on April 1, 2011.
He is the third Major Arch-Bishop of the Syro-Malabar Church and the sixth head of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese. With his elevation as Cardinal, he has become a member of the council to elect the Pope. The Syro-Malabar Church is one of the three churches in Kerala that owe allegiance to the Pope and are part of the Roman Catholic Church.
A native of Thiruthi near Changanassery in Kottayam district, Mar Alencherry was born on April 19, 1945. After school education and the seminary years, he was ordained priest on December 18, 1972. He had taken his bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Kerala with second rank and post-graduate degree in theology with first rank.
Mar Alencherry had served with the Changanassery Archdiocese from 1976 to 1978 as director of its religious school and as secretary of the Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council. He had also served as the Vicar General of the Changanassery Archdiocese. In February, 1997, he took charge as the first Bishop of the Thakkala Diocese, which was constituted in 1996.
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