CSI Diocese of Madras

The birth of the CSI on Saturday September 27, 1947 should have taken place in the St. George's Cathedral Madras, for it was from here that the initiative in this direction and to this end, was taken and pressed forward.

Thus it was that the Anglican Diocese of Madras in the Church of South India, with Bishop Hollis it first CSI Bishop.

The new CSI Diocese of Madras was a compact area comprising the city of Madras, Nellore, chinglepet, North and South Arcot and the Tamil speaking areas of Chitoor district. It had some 80,000 members, with 120 presbyters. It was second only to the Diocese of tinnevell in staff and membership. But the fact that this was Diocese which had inherited congregations from all the uniting traditions made it the all neighbouring eyes to see how the Union was going to be manifested in Unity.

The year 1640 marks the beginning of what is now the Diocese of Madras in the Church of South India, being the year of the founding of the city of Madras, and it was only in 1647 that a Chaplain of merchant fleet of the East India Company came ashore to celebrate Holy Communion in a temporary chapel in the Fort St. George. With the consecration of the oldest Anglican Church on the east of the Suez Canal in 1680 in the precincts of the Fort, dedicated to St. Mary the Blessed virgin, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, came established presence of the non-Roman Catholic Church in Madras.

The next 150 years saw the growth of the Christian population in Madras, It became obvious that the St. Mary's Church in the Fort cannot serve the growing and spread-out Christian population. So in 1815 the Church of St. George was built on the arterial road linking St. Thomas Mount and Fort St. George. On October 28, 1835 Daniel Corrie, the Archdeacon of Calcutta, was consecrated Bishop and installed in the Church of St. George, it marked both the coming into being of the Diocese of Madras and the elevation of the parish Church on the Choultry Plain to the dignity of a Cathedral.