Attached to St. Antony’s Forane Church at Kannamali, St. Joseph’s Miraculous Shrine is one of the great pilgrimage centres of the Diocese of Cochin. The shrine was built in 1955 to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of the Kannamali community from the cholera epidemic of 1905, when the village was healed after Fr. Joseph Swaras blessed and distributed food on the Feast of St. Joseph.
Each year on 19 March — the Feast of St. Joseph — thousands of pilgrims gather for the celebrated Nercha Sadhya, a communal meal of thanksgiving that has become one of the largest pilgrimage feasts in coastal Kerala.