Alvares was in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) for more than five years. While there he consecrated Vilatte as bishop in the presence of Mar Gregorios of Parumala in 1892. The denomination that consecrated Vilatte was a part of the
Indian Orthodox Church that had a Latin Rite patrimony.
V. Nagam Aiya wrote, in
Travancore State Manual, that Alvares "describe[d] his Church as the Latin branch of the
Indian Orthodox Church." The Holy See sought to consolidate two co-existing jurisdictions, the
Padroado jurisdiction and the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith jurisdiction. The Padroado was the privilege of patronage extended to
Portugal which granted the right of designating candidates for episcopal and other offices and
benefices in Africa and the
East Indies; in addition, it was an exchange of a portion of ecclesiastical revenues for missionaries and endowments to religious establishments in those territories. In time it was seen by the Holy See as an obstacle to missions: the Portuguese government failed to observe the conditions of the agreement; disagreed about the extent of the patronage by claiming the agreement was restricted by
Pope Alexander VI's
Bulls of Donation and
Treaty of Tordesillas while Rome maintained the agreement was restricted to conquered countries; and, contested papal appointments of missionary bishops or
vicars apostolic made without its consent, in countries which were never subject to its dominion. As part of the transition, churches served by
Goan Catholic priests remained under the jurisdiction of the
Patriarch of the East Indies until 1843. Later, this transition was delayed and extended until 1883-12-31. In
British Ceylon, it ended in 1887 with the appearance of a papal decree that placed all Catholics in the country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the bishops of the island. That measure met resistance. Alvares and Dr. Pedro Manoel Lisboa Pinto founded in
Goa,
Portuguese India, an association for the defence of the Padroado. Then, according to G. Bartas, in , they complained that the new diocese and vicariates were headed, almost exclusively, by
European prelates and missionaries, and petitioned the Holy See for the creation of a purely native hierarchy. Bartas did not state if there was a response, but wrote that Alvares settled the difficulty by reinventing himself as the head of his schism, appearing in Ceylon, and settling into the main old Goan Portuguese churches in the village of Parapancandel. Alvares was a
Roman Catholic Brahmin. Aiya wrote that Alvares, an educated man and the editor of a Catholic journal, was a priest in the
Metropolitan Archdiocese of Goa. Failing to maintain amicable relations with the Patriarch of the East Indies, Alvares left the and joined Mar Dionysius the Metropolitan in
Kottayam who consecrated Alvares as bishop. A strike at the largest publisher in
Colombo, influenced by Pinto's propaganda, took place in September 1893. The next day, Pinto became president of the newly formed printers union. "The main grievances of the printers included low pay and bad working and living conditions." According to Peter-Ben Smit, in
Old Catholic and Philippine Independent Ecclesiologies in History, the
Union of Utrecht's (UU)
International Old Catholic Bishops' Conference (IBC) discussed a request for admission in 1902. Smit observed that past "experiences had made ... the cautious, which in his opinion was a reason for the failure of contacts with groups in ... Ceylon ... and other countries to develop into relationships of full communion."
La Croix,
Catholic Messenger of Ceylon reported that the Alvares schism ended in 1902. Bartas did not recount the significance of Alvares' ideology, he only noted that the schism, around 1902, intended to convert corporately, to eastern orthodoxy. The cathedral in Colombo had one priest, Alvares, fairly advanced in age. He and his parishioners asked the
Holy Synod of the
Church of Greece, in
Athens, to accept them under its jurisdiction and to send them an officiating priest preaching in Latin and English. Bartas wrote: But the Greek Holy Synod reflected on information provided by the
Archimandrite Germain Kazakis, head of the Orthodox settlement of
Calcutta, in addition to the parishioners' application in which they declared themselves Orthodox but still held Roman Catholic liturgies, sacraments, and devotions. According to Smit, "presumably seeing an analogy between the respective emergences of the two churches," Stephen Silva, the secretary, complained to
Gregorio Aglipay of the
Philippine Independent Church in 1903 that the "cannot get sufficient priests to work independently of Rome." ==Apostle of charity==