Roman Catholic Church in Kasargod is unique

The Roman Catholic Church of Latin Rite at Pavoor in Kasaragod district of Kerala is the only Church which conducts its services in Tulu. The Holy Cross Church services are being conducted in Tulu language for more than 100 years now. The church located at Kasaragod Deanery comes under Mangalore Diocese.

More than 200 families come under the Holy Church Parish and attend the church services. The credit for introducing Tulu in religious service goes to the Italian Jesuit priest Fr Alexander Camissa, who came to Mangalore in 1897. He spent a year at Surathkal learning Tulu and continued his Tulu studies at Jeppu Seminary where he was a teacher. The priest  came across persons belonging to a nomadic tribe Koragas, who made a miserable living weaving baskets and doing odd jobs for a pittance near Jeppu and shifted them to Pavoor in 1912. Later the government granted 300 acres of land where they were given plots to build houses. Here the priest has begun conducting holy mass, catechism, singing, family prayers and liturgical programmes in Tulu since the people knew only that language and this continues till date.

Fr Aloysius Santiago, who worked as a Parish priest for six years and a religious brother for two years, said that they were not given any formal training to learn Tulu. The religious and liturgical programmes are written in a language we already know, hence conducting mass becomes easy.