Religion: New Patriarch

In Damascus this week, at the Cathedral of Mariameyeh (the Virgin Mary), a short, portly man with rosy cheeks and a long white beard, in vestments of gold and silver brocade, received a golden staff topped with twin serpents—and thus became the 173rd Patriarch of Antioch and of All the East, the post revered by Eastern Orthodoxy as the oldest seat in Christendom.-Behind his election loomed a battle between Communism and the West.

The Patriarch of Antioch is shepherd of about 1,000,000 souls throughout the world—110,000 of them in the U.S., 40,000 in Canada and 250,000 in Latin America. The Antioch patriarchate shares dogma, tradition and ritual with the other Orthodox patriarchates—Russia, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria—in a relationship roughly equivalent to the communion between the Episcopalian Church and the Church of England. Ever since 1945 the U.S.S.R. has been wooing the patriarchs with offers of money-earning properties in Russia, gifts to monasteries, and free trips to Moscow. When Antioch Patriarch Alexandros III died last June, after a reign of 27 years, the Communists went to work to see that their man succeeded him. Their man: Syrian Archbishop Alexandros Ghea, smart, fiftyish, and educated in the Soviet Union.

Final Cards. Rumors were soon circulating through the Middle East that Russian promises had succeeded in lining up the votes of eight of the twelve attending archbishops—who are responsible for electing one of three candidates nominated by a council of religious and lay delegates. The Communists also circulated reports of an American imperialist plot to take over the patriarchate with Archbishop Antony Bashir of New York (a U.S. citizen born in Lebanon). The Reds played their final cards two days before the election, when a representative of the Patriarch of Moscow donated some $8,000 to “victims of the Lebanese revolution.”

When election day finally came, 60 delegates assembled in the Grand Hall of the Patriarchate—archbishops in long beards and flowing black robes, city dwellers from Beirut and Damascus in Western suits and tarbooshes, Christians from the Hauran Desert in Arab headdresses. Each delegate was allowed three nominations. In the balloting, 42 votes went to Archbishop Ignatius Hraike, a stern Arab nationalist from Hama, Syria, 32 votes went to 73-year-old Archbishop Theodosios Abu Rajaili of Tripoli, oldest of the archbishops. Tied for third place were pro-Soviet Candidate Ghea and young Archbishop Elias Moawad of Aleppo, reputedly the most anti-Communist of all.

30-Minute Conclave. The names of the two tying candidates were written on pieces of paper and dropped into a tarboosh. Father Paul W. Romley of Pittsburgh, a young American priest who does not read Arabic, drew one name. Out came the name of Moawad, and the pro-Soviet candidate was out of the running. Said one pro-Western prelate later: “The decision was left to God—and we won.”

Next the archbishops were locked into the Cathedral of Mariameyeh to vote on one of the three top candidates. Within 30 minutes, the result was announced: Tripoli’s Archbishop Abu Rajaili became Patriarch Theodosios VI.

A moderate, gentle man with seven languages at his command, the Beirut-born patriarch is expected to try to keep his church out of politics, though the Russians may be too tough for him. Said one knowing Lebanese last week: “I bet they’ve started work on that old man already. And it’s doubtful that he’ll be able to know everything that’s going on in the patriarchate. Anyway, it won’t be too long before the Russians have another crack at getting their man in.”

-“And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,” says the New Testament (Acts 11:26); Paul and Barnabas founded the church there, and Peter is said to have been Antioch’s bishop before becoming the first Bishop of Rome. Antioch (now in southernmost Turkey) was then a notable Mediterranean city of some 700,000 people, but the Moslem conquest, the Crusades and earthquakes devastated the city, and, probably in the 14th century, the patriarchs moved to Damascus.