Abune Paulos

Abune Paulos ( Amharic አቡነ ጳውሎስ; born November 3, 1935 in Adwa, Tigray ( northern Ethiopia ) and Gebre Yohannes Wolde Igziabiher; † August 16, 2012 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia ) from 1992 until his death Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. His full title is His Holiness Abune Paulos, Fifth Patriarch and Catholicos of Ethiopia, Echege of the chair of St. Takla Haymanot and Archbishop of Axum.

Life

His family was the monastery of Abune Gerima, which is located in the neighborhood of Adowa, near. He joined as a boy in the monastery as a deacon students to be admitted to the order and to be ordained a priest in 1957. He continued his education at the Theological School of the Holy Trinity in Addis Ababa under the leadership of Patriarch Abune Tewophilos continued. For further studies, he was sent to the Orthodox Seminary of St. Vladimir in the United States, after which he pursued the graduate program at the Theological Seminary in Princeton with the goal of promotion.

Yohannes ' studies were interrupted because of the Patriarch asked him after the Ethiopian revolution to come back. After the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie he was appointed with four other priests to the bishop in 1973, but he accepted the Bischofsbeinamen Abune. Abune Paulos was entrusted to ecumenism as a task. As the patriarch appointed the new bishops without the permission of the new Derg regime, all five bishops were arrested in 1976 and executed the patriarch. The young bishops were held until 1983. Abune continued after his release his studies at Princeton, where he in 1988, Dr. theol. received his doctorate, and went to live in exile. In 1986 he was appointed by Patriarch Abune Takla Haymanot archbishop.

Appointment as Patriarch

In July 1992, Paulos was elected Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. According to the canon of the Church, the appointment was illegal because his predecessor, Abune used under the supervision of the military junta Merqorios, was still alive. The disempowerment of the ancient patriarchs, who fled to it in the U.S., has led to a split in the church. Because of his loyalty to the EPRDF regime, which had helped him to his position, the patriarch was often criticized. For this reason, his trips abroad were mostly accompanied by protests of believers in the Diaspora.

Further commitment

Paulos was elected at the General Assembly in Nairobi in 1975 in the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, but could not because of his imprisonment the seat long occupied not. Later he became a member of the Commission on Faith and Order. In 2006 he was elected one of the seven presidents of the WCC.

Paulos was patron of the national HIV / AIDS program and was also active as a member of the World Economic Forum and the World Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations for the AIDS problem and the situation of young people and women. For his contributions to the protection and welfare of refugees, he was awarded in 2000 by the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Refugees Nansen Refugee Award.

Ark of the Covenant

On June 19, 2009 Paulos claimed in an interview that the Ark of the Covenant of the Jews is in a safe place in Axum in Ethiopia. The charge was not subjected to aging process and corresponded exactly to the descriptions in the Bible.

Main work

• Paulos Yohannes: Filsata: The Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and the Mario logical tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1988 ( PDF; 14.9 MB).