Syria, the land of Lebanon

by Lewis Gaston Leary

To those who look to see an effective Gospel brought again to the Near East through a reawakening of the ancient Oriental churches, it is encouraging to know that even now there are prelates who are earnest, sincere and capable. Such a one was Butrus Jureijery, the first bishop of Cæsarea Philippi and later the patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church.

From beginning to end he was a thoroughgoing Catholic. Indeed, the most striking incident of his early career was an argument with a Protestant Bible-seller, which developed into a fierce fistic combat, with the result that the governor of Lebanon exiled both parties from their native town of Zahleh.

Some years later, after he had been ordained priest, Butrus journeyed to Rome and presented to the Holy Father a novel petition.

“We Catholics,” he said, “build our church upon St. Peter, the first bishop, the rock, the holder of the keys; and we remember that the apostle’s divine commission was given by Christ at Cæsarea Philippi on the slopes of Mount Hermon. How is it that the original bishopric of the Christian Church, the first see of Peter, has been so long allowed to remain unoccupied?” Now Butrus is the Arabic pronunciation of Peter. So he continued, “Here am I, bearing the very name of the greatest apostle, a native of the holy land of Lebanon, and ready to take up the arduous labors which shall reclaim for the church its first, long neglected bishopric.”

The pope was so struck by the force of the argument that he promised to consecrate the young priest as bishop of Cæsarea, or Banias, as it is now called. Then the bishop-elect went through France, preaching a kind of new crusade. His idea was novel and striking, and met with enthusiastic approval. Indeed, with such eloquence did he appeal for the proposed diocese that he became immensely popular throughout all France, and gifts for the Bishopric of Banias continued to flow in from that country as long as Butrus lived.

In 1897 the highest ecclesiastics of the Greek Catholic Church gathered in solemn convention at Serba to elect a new patriarch. Butrus Jureijery was the people’s choice; but the odds against him seemed overwhelming. He was too active and too honest for the hierarchy. The Turkish government was inimical to him, the powerful Jesuit order fought him, the papal nuncio objected to his nomination, and the bishops, almost to a man, opposed him.

For once, however, the Syrian peasants defied their ecclesiastical lords. Word was sent to the convention that its members need not return to their dioceses unless they cast their votes for Butrus. So, in spite of government, Jesuits, papal nuncio, and the wishes of the very electors themselves, the enterprising bishop of Banias became “Patriarch of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria and the Whole East,” and, subject to a hardly more than nominal allegiance to the Vatican, the supreme head of a great church whose five million adherents are scattered throughout the Near East from Hungary to Persia and from the Black Sea to the upper Nile.

He had been elected as the “People’s Patriarch,” and such he remained. A religious and political autocrat, with every opportunity and every precedent for using his office to enrich himself and his family, he remained poor and honest to the end. This means more than the American reader realizes. Throughout the East, political or ecclesiastical office is supposed to afford a quasi-legitimate means of amassing wealth. Few princes of the church have ended their lives in poverty, nor have their families known want. Yet when Butrus died, his own brother would have been unable to attend the funeral, if a popular subscription had not raised sufficient money to buy him a decent coat.

Butrus was progressive as well as honest. His personal beliefs did not change, but, as he grew older, he showed a more liberal spirit toward those who differed with him. He entered into no more fist-fights with his opponents; on the contrary, he treated them with the greatest courtesy. He was the first Greek Catholic patriarch, for instance, to return the calls of the Americans in Beirut or to visit the English Mission at Baalbek. Indeed, at one time four of the seven teachers in his own patriarchal school were Protestants. A thorough churchman himself, he learned to fight dissent with its own weapons; not anathema, excommunication and seclusion, but education, honesty and progress. He presented the spectacle of a man devout of heart and noble of purpose, but differing with some of the rest of us in his theological beliefs. Such are honored by all who hold character above creed.

He was loved by his people and admired and respected by the members of all other communions; but with his own bishops he had to wage unceasing warfare, and the contest drove him into an early grave.