The Syriac Orthodox Church has elected a new patriarch to lead one of the world’s oldest Christians. The announcement of the election of Cyril Aphrem Karim, a 48-year-old Syrian, who received the name Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, was made at the Syrian Orthodox Church’s Lebanese headquarters in the village of Atshaneh northeast of the capital Beirut.
Karim, who served as bishop in the United States, replaces Patriarch Ignatius Zakka Iwas, who died on March 21 in a hospital in Germany at the age of 80. Karim’s official title will be the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East.
The new patriarch was born in Qamishli, the capital of a northeastern Syrian province, wedged between the borders of Turkey and Iraq. He studied in St. Ephrem’s Theological Seminary in Atchaneh, Lebanon in 1977. In the 1980s, he served the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo and pursued higher education at the Coptic Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt. He was ordained as a monk in 1985 in Egypt.
He also studied in Ireland and served in Damascus, where his church is based, before his predecessor, Iwas, appointed him bishop of the east coast of the United States in 1996. Since then, Karim has been living in Teaneck, New Jersey.
He is taking the church’s leadership role at the time of great uncertainty for Christians in the Middle East.
