Venerable Fr. Matthew Kadalikkattil

 

Founder of Sacred Heart (S.H.) Congregation for Women
Born	1872 April 25 .Edapady, Meenachil, Pala Diocese, Kerala.
Died	23rd May 1935
Servant of GOD	1989
Venerated	27th June 2011
Founder of	Founder of Sacred Heart (S.H.) Congregation for Women
Mortal Remains In	Mortal remains interred at  S.H. Convent Chapel, Palai

 

Venerable Fr. Matthew Kadalikkattil  born on 25thApril, 1872 as the second son of Cherian and Rosa of a Syrian Catholic family Kadalikkattil at Edappady belonging to the diocese of Pala.                 He joined the seminary conducted in the Syrian Carmelite monastery at Mannanam and was ordained priest on February 17, 1901. To experience and share the compassionate love of the Sacred Heart to the poor and the destitute he started a new religious community on January I, 1911 in a small house with four members and consecrated it to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Fr. Mathew was later twice in charge of Lalam new and twice of the filial church at Kannadiurumpu within Palai itself. Here he bestowed special attention to the conversion and uplift of a very backward class called 'Harijens'.   Another area he worked and spent himself for God and his people was education.. He bestowed his fatherly care upon the primary school and middle school at Kannadiurumpu. Later he established an English middle school at Lalam facing almost insurmountable difficulties and hardships. This school later grew into the great girls High School, which is doing wonderful service for the higher education and overall progress of women in the area.   He had become an apostle of devotion to the Sacred Heart to the extent that he used to sign himself under the title 'The servant of Sacred Heart'. He yielded his soul to the loving Heart of Jesus on May 23, 1935.        He dedicated his life to the service of the less privileged and rejected ones of the society. So from the very beginning of the congregation he started orphanages also. His cause of canonization was taken up in 1987 and he was declared Servant of God in 1989 and declared as 'Venerable' on 27th June 2011.