St. Stephen's Shrine, Kombuthurai

St. Stephen's Shrine is a Catholic church in Kombuthurai, a fishing village in Thoothukudi district, founded by St Francis Xavier himself in May 1544. On his first visit in 1542 he baptised a Pattamkatti woman who had been in labour for three days, and after she gave birth safely the village, its headmen and the local prince became Christian. The greater miracle linked with the place is the reviving of a drowned boy named Matthew, pulled from what is now called the well of miracles. The church is said to be the first built by one saint in honour of another.

For more than two centuries it had no regular clergy, yet villagers kept the altar where Xavier said his first mass, the cross in front and the well. It became a parish in 2004, was rebuilt in 2013, and in August 2025 received a relic of St Stephen from Chieti in Italy. Feasts fall in February, kept by the Pattamkatti community, and on 2 January.