1855
The foundation stone of the great church
On 9 August 1855 Bishop Alexis Canoz of Madurai blessed the foundation stone of the present Holy Family Church. The parish's own history records that one of its priests composed for the occasion the bold motto of the whole design: "Templum sit duplex, ara sed una" — let the temple be twofold, but the altar one; may both castes be of one faith and one mind. The verse comes down to us in the parish's books; no one has read it off the stone.
Parish traditionThis moment rests on 3 sources.
What this source establishes
The motto, transcribed only in parish-side books. The transcription is textually corrupt (the second clause, "tribulis ingemnis", is not Latin), no one has ever inspected the stone, and the parish's own compilation says only that a priest COMPOSED a Latin verse — not that anything was engraved.