Devasahayam Pillai

In news– Devasahayam Pillai, a Hindu man who converted to Christianity is set to be first non-ordained conferred sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church in early 2022.

About Devasahayam Pillai–

He was born on April 23, 1712 in the village of Nattalam, Kanyakumari District in Tamil Nadu.
He went on to serve in the court of Travancore’s Maharaja Marthanda Varma.
It was here that he met a Dutch naval commander, who taught him about the Catholic faith.
In 1745, soon after he was baptised, he assumed the name “Lazarus” or “Devasahayam” in Malayalam, translated to “God is my help”.
But he then faced the wrath of the Travancore state, which was against his conversion.
In 1752, just seven years after he became a Catholic, Devasahayam was shot dead in the Aralvaimozhy forest.
Since then, he has widely been considered a martyr by the Catholic community in South India.
His body is now at Saint Francis Xavier Cathedral in the Diocese of Kottar, Tamil Nadu.
In 2004, the diocese of Kottar in Kanyakumari, along with the Tamil Nadu Bishops’ Council (TNBC) and the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) recommended Devasahayam for beatification to the Vatican.
He was declared blessed by the Kottar diocese in 2012, 300 years after his birth.
In remarks that day during the midday ‘Angelus’ prayer in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI recalled Devasahayam as ‘faithful layman’.
In February 2020, he was first approved for sainthood for “enduring increasing hardships” after he decided to embrace Christianity.