 Yohannan punctiliously wrote to the Vatican for guidance, but as Rome was then under French occupation he did not receive a reply, and in 1798 consecrated the Indian priest Paul Pandari as a bishop for the Malabar Christians.As many of the Malabar Christians were now in communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church, which had replaced the Church of the East as the main focus of loyalty among the Syrian Christians of India three centuries earlier, Yohannan tactfully appointed Pandari bishop 'of Mar Behnam', a celebrated West Syrian monastery near Mosul.The Malabar Christians informed the Vatican of Pandari's arrival in India in a letter of 17 January 1800, and Yohannan was asked to account for his actions.