1775–1838
For sixty-three years no Jesuit served this parish. It was not abandoned. Priests came from Goa under the Bishop of Cochin, and the roll of them runs without a gap: Deva Varadhanar, Ignatius, John Louis Cardoza and their successors. The feast was kept, the children were baptised, the dead were buried. And the village did more than hold on. From about 1780 it became “the sole centre of the inland mission”, with four divisional centres set under it, Sendamangalam, Andipatti, Kamanayakkanpatti and the village itself, served by priests from Cochin who “did their best to keep up the foundations already existing” until they made over the whole charge, in 1837, to the first new Jesuits at Palamcottah. Through all of it, the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened here happened in the middle of that time.
What this source establishes
Corroborates the Cochin jurisdiction from a second printed history: Ferroli lists Vadakencollam among the four Madura-Mission churches that “were under the Bishop of Cochin” in these years. In copyright: quoted, not reproduced.
This is as much of the book as this site prints. It is named in full in the bibliography below.