San Thome Basilica: Where an Apostle Rests
In Mylapore, in the busy heart of Chennai, a slender white neo-Gothic spire rises above the rooftops. This is San Thome Basilica — and beneath it lies something extraordinary: the tomb of an Apostle who knew Jesus with his own eyes.
The Apostle who came to India
Christian tradition holds that St. Thomas the Apostle — the one we remember as "Doubting Thomas," who touched the wounds of the risen Christ — travelled all the way to India to preach the Gospel. He is believed to have arrived on the south-western coast around the middle of the first century, and to have been martyred near Chennai.
The Christians of Kerala and Tamil Nadu have carried his memory for nearly two thousand years. They are sometimes called the St. Thomas Christians to this day.
A church built over a tomb
San Thome is one of only a small handful of churches in the entire world built over the tomb of an Apostle. The others are St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. To stand in Chennai and know you are near the resting place of a man who walked with Christ is a quiet astonishment.
The present gleaming white church, in the English neo-Gothic style, was raised in the late nineteenth century over the earlier Portuguese structure. It was later honoured with the title of minor basilica.
Why it matters
We can think of the faith as something that came to India recently, from far away. San Thome tells a different story. The Gospel may have reached these shores within a single generation of the Resurrection — carried not by empires, but by one Apostle willing to travel to the ends of the earth.
When you pray, you stand in a line that reaches back through the St. Thomas Christians, all the way to the man who once said, "My Lord and my God."
Keep the memory of the Apostle close as you pray with a handmade rosary.
✣ Browse our handmade rosaries. Each one is knotted and blessed by hand, then shipped with care across India and around the world. See the collection →
Faith has deep roots in Indian soil — older, perhaps, than we ever imagined.