The contribution of the Christian community in Sri Lanka is often belittled by many. Among these are some who do so due to ignorance of fact and believe more in fiction. These are the well intentioned but ill-informed. There are the others who are quite aware of fact but they prefer to believe in fiction which they themselves often fabricate to achieve their own ends.

Well-intentioned but ill-informed persons are also among our own Christians.  And that perhaps is true of the majority.

The time has now come for us to place facts before our people, and educate primarily our own Catholic and other Christian communities about our history and our contribution to the welfare of our motherland – Sri Lanka.

A good portion of this book is a talk I delivered to the staff and students of the National Seminary of Our Lady of Lanka, my own alma mater. At the end of the talk many staff members and students requested copies of it. Unfortunately, I could not do so because quite a lot of what I said there was not in the text I had in hand. At this time there were many who suggested that I get copies of it printed. And those to whom it dawned it better to get the text further embellished and printed in book form forwarded their proposal to me. It is there that I conceived the idea of presenting this text in the present form.

I thank all those who thus encouraged me. I also thank all those who subsequently helped me with more material, verified information and finally read the proofs of the final text. I thank my friend Wagner Perera for checking some of the information included here and for this last task which is certainly not the least.     

I must confess that the matter presented here is not comprehensive. There is a lot more to be researched and published. Presently a great deal of research is being made by scholars both in the East and the West. A history of Christianity in South and South East Asia that lay buried for centuries is now being unearthed. And a significant presence of Christian communities in these parts of Asia, especially South Asia is now becoming evident. These communities have flourished in these regions until the religious conflict between Islam and Christianity developed in the Middle East and Europe and spread to South Asia.

With the conversion of the Mongolian Khans to Islam – especially after Timur Lenk – Asia was not accessible to Christian missionaries. Naturally, this resulted in a sharp decline of Christian missionary Endeavour. As a result Christian groups existed as scattered groups in different parts of Asia including Sri Lanka.

A few centuries later in the 16th and 17th centuries rival western nations arrogated to themselves the role of propagating Christianity often not without the ulterior motive of expanding their own imperial boundaries. The fact if Christian sectarianism made matters worse and the technically less developed countries in Asia and Africa often became their battle ground. Unfortunately, some of these nations also received patronage and blessing from their religious leaders at the time. And this gave the colonial enterprise a religious coating which scars every innocent missionary Endeavour of Christianity in Asia to this day.

These colonial “missionaries” in their incessant effort to win favour with their religious leadership ignored every Christian presence prior to their arrival. In their effort to claim primacy in introducing Christianity in a land, they ignored any Christian presence therein or conveniently branded these groups heretical. A clear example of this is in India where the Portuguese hardly recognized the St. Thomas Catholic communities often branding them as heretics.

Fortunately a number of modern scholars are bringing to light these facts hidden by western colonial powers. Contemporary historians and archeologists have been able to unearth plenty of interesting information that proves a vital presence of Christianity even in China. If I may mention just a few - scholars recently discovered documents considered translations of Sacred Scripture into Chinese termed “Jesu Sutras”. A Christian church built  around 630 A.D in Da Qin (China) and known as “Christ Pagoda” was discovered recently and stands today as national archeological monument protected by the Chinese government (The Jesus Sutras – Martin Palmer – The Ballantine Publishing Group, New York).

There were three Crosses of the same design as that of ours found in Anuradhapura discovered in Goa (India) in May 2000, in ……………(Pakistan) and in Afghanistan.

All this proves that Christianity which originated in Asia was very much alive in Asia throughout the past several centuries. So it was in Sri Lanka. As everything else there were the ups and downs. But the undeniable fact remains that Christianity did not originate in Sri Lanka with the arrival of the Portuguese. Equally it could be said that we Christians are second to none in our patriotism and have made substantial contribution in the field of politics, culture and literature in Sri Lanka.

+ Oswald Gomis              
Archbishop of Colombo
Chancellor, University of Colombo