Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah, Bishop in South India
2 January -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Bishops, page 483
Samuel Azariah was born in 1874 in a small village in South
India, his father, Thomas Vedanayagam being a simple village
priest and his mother Ellen having a deep love and
understanding of the Scriptures. Samuel became a YMCA
evangelist whilst still only nineteen, and secretary of the
organisation throughout South India a few years later. He
saw that, for the Church in India to grow and attract
ordinary Indians to the Christian faith, it had to have an
indigenous leadership and reduce the strong western
influences and almost totally white leadership that pervaded
it. He was ordained priest at the age of thirty-five and
bishop just three years later, his work moving from primary
evangelism to forwarding his desire for more Indian clergy
and the need to raise their educational standards. He was
an avid ecumenist and was one of the first to see the
importance to mission of a united Church. He died on 1
January 1945, just two years before the creation of a united
Church of South India.