St. Stephen's Mount Tabor Diara Chapel

About this place

St. Stephen's Mount Tabor Diara Chapel is the chapel of Mount Tabor Dayara, a monastery of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in Pathanapuram, Kollam. In this church, dayara (also written diara) means a monastery. The chapel is named for St Stephen, the first Christian martyr and the patron of deacons, and for Mount Tabor, the hill in the Gospels where Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James and John. The monastery stands on a small hill in Pathanapuram town. In 1929 Deacon Thomas, later H.G. Thoma Mar Dionysius, Metropolitan of the Niranam Diocese, founded it as the Society of the Order of the Sacred Transfiguration. The Niranam diocese describes this as the second monastic order in the history of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. The order's aims were monastic life, schools and colleges, homes for older people and for children, hospitals, social service, and the teaching of Orthodox belief. The four words it uses for that work are transfer, transform, transfigure and translate.

People who come to the chapel are visiting the prayer room of a working monastery. The founder asked the monks to keep prayer, silence, fasting and monastic vows, and to join worship with manual work. Thoma Mar Dionysius was born on 8 June 1887 at Mavelikara. St Gregorios of Parumala blessed him as a child. He was ordained a deacon in 1912 at Chengannur Old Syrian Church, remained a deacon for twenty-two years, and was made a priest in 1934 and a ramban in 1937. He studied theology at Christ Church, Oxford, where he knew Dr S. Radhakrishnan, and he was consecrated a metropolitan on 6 May 1940. He took charge of the Niranam Diocese in 1944. He died on 3 December 1972 and was buried in St Stephen's Chapel. The dayara is also known for the tomb of its metropolitans. In March 2026 the Vice-President of India laid flowers at the tomb of the four metropolitans there. A memorial of the founder is kept at the chapel around the date of his death. Ask the monastery which prayers are open to visitors. Daily timings and any feast arrangements are set by the dayara.

The same hill became the start of a group of schools and colleges. Mount Tabor Training College opened in 1960 and is run by the Society of the Order of the Sacred Transfiguration. St Stephen's College, named for the same saint, was opened on 8 June 1964 in the monastery grounds by Catholicos Baselios Augen I. The junior college first worked at the dayara and later shifted to Maloor, about 6 km away. St Stephen's Higher Secondary School in Pathanapuram, a boys' school from class 5, is managed by the dayara, and so is Mount Tabor Girls High School nearby. The ashram's account lists two colleges, one higher secondary school, six high schools and six lower and upper primary schools under its care, with branches, a boys' home and a hospital outside Pathanapuram, including in Tamil Nadu. For a church visitor the features that matter are simpler: a hill chapel inside a monastery, West Syriac Orthodox worship, the grave of the metropolitan who built the place, and a town that grew up around the schools he started. Orthodox services at the dayara follow the West Syriac rite of the Malankara Church, with hymns in Syriac and Malayalam. The hill is a short walk from the Pathanapuram bus stand. Pathanapuram lies on the road east of Punalur, so the chapel fits a stop in this part of Kollam. Dress as you would for any Kerala church, and check the day's service with the monastery if you are coming for a particular prayer or memorial.

🚆 Nearest Railway: Punalur Railway Station (~14 km)

✈️ Airport: Thiruvananthapuram International Airport (~89 km)

🚌 Bus: Pathanapuram Bus Stand

🏨 Stay: Andrea Regency / Fathima Residency / Hotel Palazhi

✅ Notes: St. Stephen's Mount Tabor Diara Chapel is the chapel of Mount Tabor Dayara in Pathanapuram town, where Thoma Mar Dionysius, who founded the monastery in 1929, is buried.