Devsahayam Pillai,<\/span> an 18th-century Hindu convert to Christianity\u00a0would\u00a0<\/span>be made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican.<\/p>\n He is the first Indian layman to be declared a saint by the Vatican. All other Indians elevated as saints have been members of the clergy.<\/p>\n Devsahayam Pillai was born in 1712 in the village of Nattalam in Tamil Nadu\u2019s Kanyakumari District.<\/span><\/p>\n He grew up in an upper caste family of temple priests and was known as Nilakanda Pillai.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n He went on to serve in the court of Travancore\u2019s Maharaja Marthanda Verma. It was here that he met a Dutch naval commander, who taught him about the Catholic faith.<\/span><\/p>\n He then converted to Christianity in 1745. He took the Christian name Lazarus, but later came to be known as Devasahayam (God\u2019s help).<\/span><\/p>\n However, he then faced the wrath of the Travancore state which was against his conversion.<\/span><\/p>\n In 1752, just seven years after he became a Catholic, Devasahayam was shot dead. Since then, he has widely been considered a martyr by the Catholic community in South India.<\/span><\/p>\n The Church is of the view that his preaching of equality of all people despite caste differences eventually led to his martyrdom.<\/span><\/p>\n Source: <\/b>This post is based on the article \u201c<\/b>Explained: Who is Devasahayam, the first Indian layman to be conferred saint\u201d<\/b> published by Indian Express on 16th November 2021.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is the news? Devsahayam Pillai, an 18th-century Hindu convert to Christianity\u00a0would\u00a0be made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican. He is the first Indian layman to be declared a saint by the Vatican. All other Indians elevated as saints have been members of the clergy. Who was Devsahayam Pillai? Devsahayam Pillai… Continue reading Explained: Who is Devasahayam, the first Indian layman to be conferred sainthood?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-public","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704788235},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Who was Devsahayam Pillai?<\/b><\/h5>\n