On Sunday 15th May 2022, Pope Francis declared 10 people as saints of the Roman Catholic Church. One of them is Devashayam Pillai from Tamil Nadu in India, born on 23 April 1712 and died on 14 January 1752. Devashayam Pillai was originally from a Hindu Nair family, at Nattalam in Kanyakumari district, which was part of the erstwhile Travancore kingdom. But later he was converted to Christianity by a Dutch naval commander. 85-years-old Pope Francis canonized him in a Canonization Mass organized in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.
Devasahayam Pillai, known as Lazarus, is the first Indian layman to become a saint, according to the Vatican. He was an official in the court of Travancore’s Maharaja Marthanda Varma. He converted to Catholicism in 1745 while working at the royal palace, where he met a captured Dutch commander who taught him about Christianity. After converting to Christianity in 1745, Devasahayam Pillai had assumed the Christian name ‘Lazarus’ in the local language which means ‘God is my help’.
According to Church Chroniclers, the Brahmin chief priest of the kingdom, the feudal lords, members of the royal household, and the Nair community brought false charges on Devasahayam to the Dewan, Ramayyan Dalawa. Pillai was divested of his portfolio in the Travancore administration and was later accused of treason and of divulging state secrets to rivals and Europeans. According to the Vatican, his faith, and his preaching of equality of all peoples, a so-called revolutionary view at the time, caused a stir and when he refused to renounce his new religion, he was arrested.
It is said that after almost three years of imprisonment and torture, during which he began to be visited by pilgrims, he was shot dead in a forest on the orders of the king on January 14, 1752. His mortal remains were interred near the altar inside St. Xavier’s Church, Kottar, Nagercoil, which is now the diocesan Cathedral. He was declared a martyr and beatified in 2012.
As the process is completed, he is now the first layperson from India to become a saint. It is mandatory to have at least two miracles to one’s credit for getting declared a Saint. The miracle of resuscitating a foetus in the 20th week of pregnancy attributed to Devasahayam Pillai was recognized by Pope Francis in 2014, clearing the path to his canonization in 2022. Earlier in 2016, the Pope had recognized one such miracle by Mother Teresa to clear her way to sainthood.
