Path to Catholic faith winds from India through Western Maryland to Cockeysville

It’s a not-so-familiar love story.

A boy raised Hindu in India moves to the United States, and meets a good Catholic girl with roots in Western Maryland through an online dating service. Her faith is woven into their courtship, which culminates in their being married Jan. 11 at St. Ann in Grantsville.

That was just the start of a year of monumental liturgies for Sriram Manivannan and Anne Mathews.

Husband and wife were catechumen and sponsor, respectively, at the Rite of Election at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland March 1. Come April 11, he will receive the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and first Communion during the Easter Vigil at St. Joseph in Cockeysville, their home parish.

That journey has involved what has become a shared passion.

Manivannan attended Mass as a first- and second-grader at a Catholic school in Chennai, a metropolis on the Bay of Bengal, but said he absorbed little about the faith. He attended high school, college and did his graduate work in chemical engineering here in the U.S. When he shared his interest in Catholicism with a co-worker, the response was, “that’s a lot of standing and kneeling,” but by then Manivannan knew there was much more to the faith than that, thanks to Mathews.

She has roots in what are now Divine Mercy and Our Lady of the Mountains parishes, and graduated from Bishop Walsh School in Cumberland. Mathews was active in Catholic campus ministry at McDaniel College in Westminster, to the point where the concelebrants at their wedding included Father Matthew Gill, of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., a friend from college days.

She carried her zeal into Baltimore Frassati Fellowship for young adults, and assorted volunteer efforts.

“I joked with her once,” Manivannan said, “and asked, ‘Are you trying to be a saint?’ She said, ‘Yes, that’s the goal.’ That’s a pretty high bar to live up to.”

He, in turn, keeps Mathews on her toes, as Manivannan has become a fan of the podcasts of Bishop Robert Barron, an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

“There’s not a single day goes by,” Mathews said, “when he doesn’t say, ‘Did you hear Bishop Barron?’”

Manivannan was among 121 catechumens and 234 candidates participating in the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion at the cathedral, where Archbishop William E. Lori presided. They represented more than half of the total who will be fully initiated or come into full communion with the church at the Easter Vigil, as 60 catechumens and 117 candidates took part in the rite at St. John Neumann in Annapolis, and 30 and 63, respectively, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg.

Catechumens have not been baptized in another Trinitarian faith tradition, and are preparing for the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and Eucharist. Candidates are those who have been baptized, and are preparing for the sacraments of confirmation and Eucharist.

At the cathedral, nearly one-third of candidates being called were from either Sacred Heart of Jesus/Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in Highlandtown, or the pastorate of Sacred Heart in Glyndon and St. Charles Borromeo in Pikesville, a Hispanic parish and faith community with a growing Hispanic presence, respectively.

To that end, Archbishop Lori repeated his homily, in Spanish.

 

Email Paul McMullen at pmcmullen@CatholicReview.org

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