IN THE BEGINNING

The concept of building an Infant Jesus church in Ponnapa Nadar Colony, (Nagercoil, Kanyakumari District, India) started about 10 years back. A few like minded people formed a group and had their first meeting at Servite Convent. A committee was formed, Mr Soosai was unanimously chosen as the president and Mr Panipichai as the secretary. Under the direction of Fr. Yesu Rathnam who was then the parish priest of Holy Family Church, the committee planned to procure a piece of land. The idea was presented to the Bishop and the request for a new parish was met favourably. The President was the first to say that he would donate
Rs. 50,000 after that everybody pitched in and the committee started raising funds. They began going for collection and everybody in the colony were rather interested at the idea of having a church close by. Mr.Athanas had some land in Carmel Mount Street, he offered to sell it, so the committee bought his share of the land and the land adjoining it. They finally had about twenty cents of land in the church's name.

Next step was getting the approval from the government officials, which took us about ten years. It was only due to the untiring perseverance of the secretary that we received the offical green signal. Meanwhile in our eagerness to have a church we started the foundation work which was blessed by Fr. Amalraj Nevis. Some priests came from the bishop house, a parish council was formed and handed over to Fr. Ladislause , parish priest of St Antony's church. The INFANT JESUS CHURCH became a sub- station. We were all exhilarated.