Sebastian Mankuzhikary

Mar Sebastian Mankuzhikary was the first bishop of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Diocese of Thamarassery in Kerala, India.
Born in Thanneermukkom, Kerala, he was educated at seminaries in India and ordained a priest on 12 March 1955. He subsequently studied philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome where he completed his doctoral dissertation in 1959, Metaphysical Vision of Tagore, a study on the writer, philosopher and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. After post-doctoral work at the Catholic University of Louvain and teaching at the St. Joseph's Pontifical Seminary in Kerala, he was ordained auxiliary bishop of Ernakulam and titular bishop of Arethusa dei Siriin on 15 November 1969 and became the first holder of the bishopric of Thamarassery in 1986.