Timothaus Shallita

Last updated May 28, 2024

Timothaus Mar Shallita Youwala (born 1936) is Archbishop of the Ancient Holy Apostolic Catholic Church of the East for Germany and all Europe.^[1] He currently resides in Mainz-Kastel, Germany.

Bibliography

Archbishop Timothaus Mar Shallita Youwala TimothausMarShallita.JPG — Archbishop Timothaus Mar Shallita Youwala

Archbishop Timothaus Mar Shallita Youwala was born July 14, 1936, in Barwari Bala, Iraq, in the village of Galja, where the church of Mar Qayoma is situated. Many bishops of the Mar Youalla family, which has served the Church of the East for over four hundred years, have emerged from there. He was consecrated a Deacon on September 3, 1954, in the village of Harir, Iraq, by Metropolitan Mar Yosip Khnanisho, the uncle of Patriarch Shimun XXI Eshai. After the death of Bishop Mar Yalda Yawallaha in 1950, two nephews were to qualify for succession; Andreos and Shallita. After a vacancy of six years, Metropolitan Mar Yosip Khanisho and Patriarchal representative in Iraq decided to consecrate Andreos as bishop on July 14, 1957. Mar Andreos served as bishop until his death in June 1973.

Shallita and his supporters did not accept this decision as Andreos was younger than Shallita. In protest of the decision, Shallita and his supporters joined the Syriac Orthodox Church. Consequently, Timothaus Mar Shallita was consecrated Archbishop in the church St. Petrus and Paulus in Beirut, Lebanon, by Patriarch Ignatius Ya`qub III on October 23, 1958. Participants to the ceremony were Archbishop Mar Paulus from Iraq, Archbishop Bahnnan from Lebanon, Bishop Paulus from Jerusalem and the current Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church Zakka I Iwas, a former secretary and monk. Over 2,000 guests attended the consecration, Camille Chamoun, the president of Lebanon, being one of them. Timotheus Mar Shallita was welcomed into communion, but did not join the Holy Synod of the church.

Timothaus Mar Shallita returned from Lebanon to Iraq in 1958. At that time, King Faisal II of Iraq had been murdered by General Abd al-Karim Qasim and the monarchy was abolished. He met with General Qasim, who had taken over power and had also murdered the Prime Minister Nuri al-Said, to demand freedom of speech and press. After this, the archbishop gave a speech in Aramaic and Arabic which was broadcast on the radio and television in Baghdad.

From Baghdad he returned to Barwari-Bala. Three years later, the conflict between the Kurds and the Iraqi government began, which caused Mar Shallita to temporarily leave to Mosul in 1963, later relocating to the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus. There he met Patriarch Ignatius Ya`qub III, who contacted the World Council of Churches in Geneva on his behalf. Almost immediately, representatives of the Evangelical Church in Germany invited the Archbishop to come to Darmstadt. There he arrived in 1967 and attended evening school to learn German. Shallita later left the Syrian Orthodox Church In 1969 and entered into communion with the Ancient Church of the East based in Baghdad. However, he did not join the Holy Synod until 1995 and was officially recognised as Metropolitan of Germany and Europe.

This entailed the foundation of new Assyrian communities in Europe. An example is the opening of the St. Georges Church in Joenkopings, Sweden, where Timothaus Mar Shallita attended the opening ceremony. Furthermore, he has consecrated an Archpriest, Khoshaba M. Georges, in London as well as a priest, Jacob Warda, in Denmark, a priest, Oz Sabri, in Marseilles along with eleven deacons all over Europe. On June 8, 1997, the cornerstone ceremony for the church Mar Shallita in Los Angeles took place. President Emanuel Bet Maleck, Sarkis Mikkael Fard, and Mr. David S. Younan were attending the ceremony.

At the time when Archbishop Timothaus Mar Shallita was consecrated, there was only a small division. But a huge split has emerged, caused by the fact that two patriarchs claim to lead one Assyrian church and people. Nevertheless, Timothaus Mar Shallita, who disapproves of the division into two parts, has tried to unite the church and the people by negotiating with both Patriarchs.

Timothaus Mar Shallita speaks in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Arabic, Kurdish, German, and English.

Refugee aid

For many years, Assyrian refugees have been writing to Timothaus Mar Shallita in search of help from persecution. In 1978, the archbishop lived in the monastery of Pandely in Greece for a few months where he supported about 8,000 Assyrians who had fled to Greece with the help of the United Nations and the Red Cross. He had talked to the Greek government beforehand in order to arrange possible housing and working places for the refugees, who not only fled from Iraq but also from Iran, Lebanon and Syria.

In 1983, he headed to Italy, again to support the approximately 2,000 refugees and to improve their situation. Thereafter, he went to France to continue his mission. In 1991, he arrived in Turkey to visit the ten Assyrian refugees camps accompanied by staff members of the UNHCR. Silopi was one of these camps. Before his arrival, Timothaus Mar Shallita had received a list with the name of over 40,000 refugees, asking him for help. Afterwards, he talked to the Turkish administration and succeeded in gathering the Assyrian refugees into two camps instead of ten and also insisting on accommodation in houses and no longer in tents, as the harsh East Anatolian winter was not far away.

After that, he started negotiations with the ambassadors of many nations. Months before his travel to Turkey, Timothaus Mar Shallita had already informed them about the situation of the Assyrians including the Chaldeans by introducing for the first time this ethnic minority, for most countries did not know that the Assyrians still existed. In these negotiations, he succeeded in talks and thousands of Assyrians were admitted as refugees in European countries.

Timothaus Mar Shallita with Lars Thomsen of the UN and Mr. Theobald
Timothaus Mar Shallita on Turkish television
Refugees in Turkey
Refugees in Italy
Refugees in Greece

Literature

Verena Fehlmann-Meyer "Church of the East in Europe and America"
Writings by Prof. Dr. Donart and Dr. Transchuk
Summaries by Sabine Juli

Related Research Articles

The Syriac Orthodox Church, also known as West Syriac Church or West Syrian Church, officially known as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, and informally as the Jacobite Church, is an Oriental Orthodox church that branched from the Church of Antioch. The bishop of Antioch, known as the patriarch, heads the church and possesses apostolic succession through Saint Peter, according to sacred tradition. The church upholds Miaphysite doctrine in Christology, and employs the Liturgy of Saint James, associated with James the Just. Classical Syriac is the official and liturgical language of the church.

The Syriac Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic Christian jurisdiction originating in the Levant that uses the West Syriac Rite liturgy and has many practices and rites in common with the Syriac Orthodox Church. Being one of the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches, the Syriac Catholic Church is a self-governed sui iuris particular church, while it is in full communion with the Holy See and with the entirety of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Assyrian Church of the East (ACOE), sometimes called the Church of the East and officially known as the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East (HACACE), is an Eastern Christian church that follows the traditional Christology and ecclesiology of the historical Church of the East. It belongs to the eastern branch of Syriac Christianity, and employs the Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari belonging to the East Syriac Rite. Its main liturgical language is Classical Syriac, a dialect of Eastern Aramaic, and the majority of its adherents are ethnic Assyrians.

The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic particular church in full communion with the Holy See and the rest of the Catholic Church, and is headed by the Chaldean Patriarchate. Employing in its liturgy the East Syriac Rite in the Syriac dialect of the Aramaic language, it is part of Syriac Christianity. Headquartered in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Sorrows, Baghdad, Iraq, since 1950, it is headed by the Catholicos-Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako. In 2010, it had a membership of 490,371, of whom 310,235 (63.27%) lived in the Middle East.

Mār Yōsip Khnanisho, the twelfth Metropolitan or Matran of Shemsdin from 1918 to 1977.

Assyrians in Turkey or Turkish Assyrians are an indigenous Semitic-speaking ethnic group and minority of Turkey who are Eastern Aramaic–speaking Christians, with most being members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Pentecostal Church, Assyrian Evangelical Church, or Ancient Church of the East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gewargis III</span> 21st-century Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East

Mar Gewargis III served as the 121st Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East. On 18 September 2015, the Holy Synod of the Assyrian Church of the East elected Mar Gewargis Sliwa to succeed the late Mar Dinkha IV as the head of the Church. On 27 September 2015, he was formally consecrated and enthroned as Catholicos-Patriarch.

The Nochiya are an Assyrian tribe that were based in and around the district of Şemdinli, in the province of Hakkari, Turkey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christianity in Lebanon</span>

Christianity in Lebanon has a long and continuous history. Biblical Scriptures show that Peter and Paul evangelized the Phoenicians, whom they affiliated to the ancient Patriarchate of Antioch. Christianity spread slowly in Lebanon due to pagans who resisted conversion, but it ultimately spread throughout the country. Even after centuries of Muslim rule, it remains the dominant faith of the Mount Lebanon region and has substantial communities elsewhere.

The Assyrian homeland, Assyria, refers to the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in their indigenous Upper Mesopotamia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region. The majority of Assyrians in Iran currently reside in the capital city, Tehran.

Ignatius Aphrem I Barsoum was the 120th Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1933 until his death in 1957. He was consecrated as a Metropolitan and as a Patriarch at a very hard time for the Syriac Orthodox church and its people and parishes and he worked very hard to re-establish the church initiations to where his people moved. He researched, wrote, translated, scriped, and published many scholarly works that included books on the saints, tradition, liturgy, music, and history of Syriac Orthodox Church.

Assyrians in Lebanon or Assyrian Lebanese, are people of Assyrian descent living in Lebanon. It is estimated that there are approximately 30,000 Assyrians currently residing in Lebanon, primarily in Beirut and Zahlé. This number includes the descendants of Assyrian genocide survivors who fled Iraq, Turkey, and Iran between 1915-1934.

Mor Julius Yeshu Cicek was the first Syriac Orthodox Church archbishop for Central Europe. In his book Mardutho d Suryoye, he advocated an Aramean identity. He wrote over one hundred works, some of them in Aramaic.

Baselios Augen I was the 17th Malankara Metropolitan, the fourth Catholicos of the East in the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, and the first Catholicos of India in the Jacobite Syriac Orthodox Church. He was the first Catholicos consecrated in a reunified Malankara Church, by the Patriarch of Antioch in 1964 but his tenure saw a second split in the Holy Church.

Mar Shimun XX Paulos served as the 118th Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dioceses of the Syriac Orthodox Church</span>

In the period of its greatest expansion, in the tenth century, the Syriac Orthodox Church had around 20 metropolitan dioceses and a little over a hundred suffragan dioceses. By the seventeenth century, only 20 dioceses remained, reduced in the twentieth century to 10. The seat of Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch was at Mardin before the First World War, and thereafter in Deir Zaʿfaran, from 1932 in Homs, and finally from 1959 in Damascus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dioceses of the Church of the East after 1552</span>

Dioceses of the Church of the East after 1552 were dioceses of the Church of the East and its subsequent branches, both traditionalist and pro-Catholic.

Diocese of Berwari was an East Syriac diocese of the Church of the East, existing between the 16th and 20th centuries and covering the region of Berwari.

Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II is a Syrian-American Christian prelate who is serving as the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church since 29 May 2014.

Flavianos Michael Malke, born Ya'Qūb Melkī; was an Eastern Catholic prelate of the Brothers of Saint Ephrem of an Syriac background. He became the Syrian Catholic eparch of Gazarta. Malke was killed in Gazarta during the Assyrian/Syriac Genocide after he refused to convert to Islam.

References

↑ Invitation, University of Potsdam , Retrieved November 27, 2010 (regarding a talk to be given by Shallita, identifying him with this position)

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[ref1-1] Invitation, University of Potsdam , Retrieved November 27, 2010 (regarding a talk to be given by Shallita, identifying him with this position)

[1]