St. Mary's Cathedral (; ''Śānta Mariyā Āsana Dev Mædura'') is the

seat A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but may also refer to concentrations of power in a wider sense (i.e " seat (legal entity)"). See disambiguation. Types of seat The ...

of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Jaffna The Diocese of Jaffna () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in northern Sri Lanka. Latin Catholicism in the diocese's territory dates to the time of Francis Xavier. The current bishop is Justin Gnanapra ...

located in

Gurunagar Gurunagar () is a coastal village in Jaffna city in northern Sri Lanka. Gurunagar is also known as ''Karaiyur'' (). The suburb is divided into two village officer divisions (Gurunagar East and Gurunagar West) whose combined population was 3,520 ...

, a suburb of

Jaffna Jaffna (, ; , ) is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka, Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna District located on a Jaffna Peninsula, peninsula of the same name. With a population o ...

in northern

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

. The cathedral is also known locally as ''Periye Kovil'' ().

History

According to historical sources,

King King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...

Cankili I Cankili I () (died 1565), also known as Segarasasekaram (Jaga Rajasekharam), is the most remembered Jaffna kingdom king in the Sri Lankan Tamil history. He was active in resisting Portuguese colonial inroads into Sri Lanka. He inherited his throne ...

killed his son at the location of the present cathedral after his son converted to

Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. The prince's ashes were buried at the spot where he was killed and a chapel, which later served as the foundation for the construction of the present cathedral, was built. Construction of St. Mary's Church began in 1789 and was completed in 1794. The first parish priest was Rev. Fr. Leonard Rebeiro. The church was built on the site of a thatched house that had previously served as a worshipping place for Jaffna's Catholics. The church has a total of fourteen

novena A novena (from , "nine") is an ancient tradition of devotional praying in Christianity, consisting of private or public prayers repeated for nine successive days or weeks. The nine days between the Feast of the Ascension and Pentecost, when the ...

s. The ancestors of the 10th and 11th novena gifted land for the church and the ancestors of the 12th and 13th novenas gifted land and also contributed with money for purchasing land for the church. By the early twentieth century the church, which was now a cathedral, had become too small to accommodate all its worshippers. Construction of a new cathedral began in 1939 but wasn't completed until 1975.

Notes

References

External links

* 1794 establishments in Asia 18th-century establishments in Sri Lanka Roman Catholic churches completed in 1794 Churches in Jaffna Roman Catholic cathedrals in Sri Lanka Roman Catholic churches completed in 1975 Roman Catholic churches in the Diocese of Jaffna 18th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Sri Lanka {{SriLanka-church-stub