Places · School
St. Aloysius College, Elthuruth
The CMI college at Elthuruth, which grew from a small boarding school for boys opened beside the monastery around 1889.
Photo: Thrissur · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
St. Aloysius College stands at Elthuruth, on the western edge of Aranattukara, next to the Elthuruth Ashram founded by St. Kuriakose Elias Chavara.
A boarding school by the wetlands
The college began as the Elthuruth English Middle School, opened around 1889 and attached to the monastery. Only boys were admitted. Because it offered boarding, sons of well-known Christian families from all over Cochin State came to study here.
In 1933 the middle school became a high school, with Fr. Pancratius CMI as its first headmaster. Before Aranattukara had a high school of its own, many of its able pupils went to Elthuruth to study. One of them was Mar Antony Chirayath, later Bishop of Sagar, who passed his tenth standard at St. Aloysius High School in 1958.
The college
Around the middle of the twentieth century the CMI congregation raised the school into a college. The book describes it as still serving students from the western side of Thrissur very well.
The college also had a place in Aranattukara’s cultural life. Its principal, Prof. O.J. Antony, an English scholar, opened his home to the young writers of the Mathrubhumi Study Circle.
We would like to add the year the college was founded and memories from former students. Please get in touch if you can help.
Related
St. Kuriakose Elias Chavara
Carmelite reformer and saint who founded the Elthuruth monastery in 1858 with the support of Aranattukara parish.
Mar Antony Chirayath
Priest of the Sagar diocese who became its third bishop (2006–2018), the second bishop from Aranattukara parish.
Arts, Drama and Clubs
A university drama school, amateur theatre clubs, portrait painters, a study circle and football on the Netaji Ground. Aranattukara's long love of the stage and the playing field.
The Schools That Shaped Aranattukara
From village writing schools taught by Hindu teachers to Tharakan's School, the girls' high schools and St. Aloysius College at Elthuruth, this is how Aranattukara learned to read, and how its classrooms helped heal a divided parish.