{"id":17668,"date":"2021-09-01T02:04:51","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T02:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=17668"},"modified":"2021-09-01T02:04:52","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T02:04:52","slug":"293rd-pontiff-takes-over-at-the-madurai-adheenam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2021\/09\/01\/293rd-pontiff-takes-over-at-the-madurai-adheenam\/","title":{"rendered":"293rd Pontiff Takes Over at the Madurai Adheenam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>MADURAI, INDIA, August 23, 2021 (The Hindu): Sri La Sri Harihara Sri Gnanasambanda Desika Swamigal took over as the 293rd pontiff of the Madurai Adheenam at a grand coronation ceremony that took place on Monday. After the recent death of the 292nd pontiff, Sri La Sri Arunagirinadha Sri Gnanasambanda Desika Paramacharya Swamigal, the historic Shaivite mutt had announced that Harihara Desika Swamigal would become the next pontiff as he was appointed as the junior pontiff of the mutt, in 2019. Sri La Sri Harihara Sri Gnanasambandha Desika Swamigal was born as Bagavathi Lakshmanan to Gandhimadhinadhan Pillai and Janaki Ammai in 1954, in a village called Udankudi in Tirunelveli. He became a saint when he was 21-years old. For about 39 years, he has held different positions in famous Shaivite mutts such as Kundrakudi Adheenam, Thiruvavadudurai Adheenam and Dharmapuram Adheenam.<br><br>The ceremonies kick-started early in the day, with a puja inside the mutt\u2019s premises in South Avani Moola Street, at 8. At 11, the \u2018to-be-coronated\u2019 pontiff visited the Adhenaam\u2019s place in Munichalai where Arunagirinadha Swamigal\u2019s mortal remains were laid to rest and a Guru Puja was conducted. A little later, the 293rd pontiff\u2019s coronation ceremony took place in the presence of Masilamani Desika Paramacharya Swamigal, inside the mutt. After that, a Maaheshwara Puja was performed by saints from different Shaivite mutts across Tamil Nadu. Later in the evening, the pontiff, along with the other saints visited the Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple, to seek the blessings of the Almighty.<br><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/cities\/Madurai\/293rd-pontiff-takes-over-at-the-madurai-adheenam\/article36057054.ece\">https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/cities\/Madurai\/293rd-pontiff-takes-over-at-the-madurai-adheenam\/article36057054.ece<\/a><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MADURAI, INDIA, August 23, 2021 (The Hindu): Sri La Sri Harihara Sri Gnanasambanda Desika Swamigal took over as the 293rd,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17678,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17668\/revisions\/17678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}