Thomas Athanasius

Thomas Mar Athanasius Mar Thoma XIV, or Thomas Thirumeni (7 October 1836 – 10 August 1893), was the Reformist claimant to the Metropolitanate of the Malankara Church from 1877 to 1889, and Metropolitan of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church from 1889 to 1893. The first son of prominent Malankara Church reformist Abraham Malpan (the "Martin Luther of the East"), he was born into the Palakunnathu family of Maramon. He ascended to the throne of the Malankara Metropolitan midway through a 24-year-long dispute between the competing Traditionalist and Reformist factions of the Malankara Church, which was ended following a Travancore Royal Court verdict in 1889 whereby he was removed from office by the majority pro-Patriarchate faction of the church and evicted from the Pazhaya seminary (the seat of Malankara Metropolitan).

The Reformist faction of the Malankara Syrian Church, which stood faithful to him, later organized into an Independent Reformed Syrian Church governed by its own autocephalous bishop, adopting the name "Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church”, over which he presided until his death four years later. The Mar Thoma Syrian Church claims to be the true autonomous Malankara Syrian Church dating back to the Apostolic activity of St. Thomas the Apostle in the 1st Century A.D. Provided by Wikipedia