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Catholic World News News Feature

New inquiry: Vatican probes Syrian patriarchate July 21, 2004

Pope John Paul II has named an apostolic visitator to the Syrian Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch.

Archbishop Edmond Farhat, the apostolic nuncio in Turkey, will travel to Beirut to investigate tensions within the Eastern-rite Catholic Church.

Although an apostolic visitation is an unusual event, the news of Archbishop Farhat's appointment came just one day after the Vatican had announced the appointment of Bishop Klaus Kung to conduct an apostolic visitation of the St. Pölten diocese in Austria, which has been shaken by a homosexual scandal in the diocesan seminary.

Informed sources at the Vatican said that the apostolic visitation of the Syrian Catholic Church was prompted by severe tensions within the Syrian synod of bishops. The Vatican is looking for ways to help Syrian Catholic prelates to relieve that tension, the sources indicated. (An apostolic visitator is sent to report on affairs in a particular diocese or ecclesiastical institution, acting on specific instructions from the Holy See. He will be expected to provide the Pope with a detailed report; he may also be given limited authority, set forth in the terms of his assignment, to take immediate action to correct serious problems.)

Like the other Eastern Catholic churches, the Syrian Catholic Church has its own patriarch, elected by its own synod of bishops. The Syrian Catholic Church-- which counts at most 100,000 faithful, living almost exclusively in the Middle East-- is one of the Eastern churches which, in the course of recent centuries, has broken from the Orthodox world to petition for a restoration of full communion with the Holy See. Again like the other Eastern Catholic churches, the Syrian Catholic Church recognizes the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, while conserving its own liturgical and spiritual traditions.

Today the Syrian Catholic Church is led by Patriarch Ignace Pierre VIII of Antioch, whose historic see is now based in Beirut. (The Syrian patriarch traditionally takes the name "Ignace," along with another name of his own choosing.) Patriarch Ignace Pierre VIII was elected by the Syrian Catholic synod, and Pope John Paul II recognized his election by extending full communion on February 20, 2001.

The previous Syrian Catholic leader, Cardinal Ignace Moussa I Daoud, resigned from the Patriarchate of Antioch when he was named by Pope John Paul to his current post, as prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches.