St Sebastian's Monastery
Pulincunnoo
ESTD: 1861

About

This is the fifth monastery founded by Blessed Chavara in 1862. Blessed Chavara had preached a retreat to the parishioners of Pulincunnu immediately after his ordination in 1829, which had greatly impressed the people of the land. Later, Fr. Alexander Kattakayam senior with his team preached another retreat in the same parish. The impression created by these retreats among the people influenced the parish to invite the CMI fathers to establish a monastery in their midst. There was, at the time, at the Thekethalackal angadi a chapel dedicated to St. Sebastian and a cemetery attached to it, where the people died of small pox were buried. The Pulincunnu parish donated the chapel with the annexed land to the congregation in 1862. Though the construction of the monastery was begun immediately it was completed only 1872. On the order of the vicar apostolic a seminary too was started in the same year. This monastery was a centre of the struggle for indigenous bishops, on which account two of the fathers of the monastery were dismissed from the congregation by the vicar apostolic. Bishop Benziger stayed here for three months in 1901 to study Malayalam.

By 1898 a school, St. Joseph English School was started here. In course of years, it was raised to a high school. The single story buildings of the school were renovated and raised to two stories by Fr. Louis Kandankary the then prior in 1990s. An ICSE English medium school K.E. Carmel School was also started in 2000 by his efforts.

The monastery chapel in the present site was renovated to the present shape in 1960s through the efforts of Fr. Andrews Poonoly, the then prior of the monastery. The monastery building, as we see today, was built in 2005 after demolishing the old one, by Fr. Joseph Vattaparambil.