Yohannan VIII Hormizd
For the next eight years Yohannan Hormizd seemed to justify the hopes placed in him. He lived on amicable terms with the Catholic missionaries and devoted his energies to the conversion to Catholicism of the villages under his authority. In May 1790, on the advice of the missionaries, he consecrated his nephew Shemon metropolitan, and in August of the same year sent him to the Zibar district, where he converted the Nestorian villages of Arena and Barzane. The following year he sent Shemon to Mengesh in the Sapna district, where he was equally successful. The high point of this honeymoon period came in February 1791, when the Vatican appointed him patriarchal administrator of the Amid patriarchate, recalling Lazar Hindi to Rome to leave him a free hand. This appointment led to strenuous protests from Lazar Hindi, his vicar-general Joseph Attar and the clergy of Amid, and on 3 February 1793 Yohannan Hormizd's appointment was rescinded.
Hormizd, the Martyr
Hormizd became the patron of one of the Oriental churches in India, namely St. Hormiz which belonged to the Syro-Malabar Church at Angamaly in Kerala. The relationship could easily be understood in connection with the 16th century Padroado mission in Malabar, where the missionaries tried to conform the rites and liturgy of the ancient Christians of St. Thomas with the Latin rite. After the promulgation of the canons of the Synod of Diamper, Rabban Hormizd, a seventh century saint of the Church of East Syria, was no more the patron of the St. Hormizd Church, the once Cathedral of the late Archbishop Abraham of Angamaly. The Synod of Diamper prohibited the Christians from commemorating the feast of Rabban Hormizd, since Hormizd was considered a Nestorian heretic by Latin missionaries. According to the new regulations, the Synod commanded as planned by Archbishop Aleixo de Menezes that the Christians celebrate the feast of St. Hormizd, the Martyr (according to the Roman Martyrology published from Rome in 1583), a Persian Catholic saint who lived in the fifth century, suppressing the memory of Rabban Hormizd. The Feast was fixed on the 8th of August according to the Canon 10 of the Session 2 of the Synod of Diamper.