His Grace
Bishop BASIL passes along the news that THE HOLY
SYNOD of our Patriarchate of the Great City-of-God
Antioch and all the East convened today, Tuesday -
October 6th (2009), at the Patriarchal Residence in
Damascus, Syria for its fall meeting.
In attendance
were His Beatitude PATRIARCH IGANTIUS IV (Hazim),
the president of the Synod, and the following
seventeen Metropolitans: GEORGE (Khodre) of Mount
Lebanon, CONSTANTINE (Papastephanou) of Baghdad of
Kuwait, ELIAS (Audi) of Beirut, JOHN (Mansour) of
Latakiya, ELIAS (Kafoury) of Tyre and Sidon, ANTONIO
(Chedraoui) of Mexico, Venezuela and Central
America, DAMASKINOS (Mansour) of Brazil, SERGIOS (Abad)
of Chile, SABA (Esber) of Hauran and Jabal al-Arab,
GEORGE (Abu Zakham) of Homs, PAUL (Yaziji) of
Aleppo, PAUL (Saliba) of Australia and New Zealand,
SILOUAN (Moosy) of Argentina, JOHN (Yaziji) of
Western and Central Europe, and BASIL (Mansour) of
Akkar, ELIA (Saliba) of Hama, and SPYRIDON (Khoury)
of Zahleh.
AXIOS! During
its first session the Holy Synod elected the
renowned and highly respected spiritual elder
ARCHIMANDRITE EPHREM (Kyriakos), abbot of the Holy
Monastery of the Archangel Michael in Biq'aata,
Lebanon, for the archepiscopal throne of the
recently widowed Archdiocese of Tripoli, al-Koura
and Dependencies.
