Elias Coueter

Elias Coueter (born August 15, 1896 in Damascus , Syria , † June 16, 1985 ) was Bishop of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church for all Melkites in Brazil . The bishopric is in São Paulo .

Priests, pastors and teachers

Elias Coueter was the son of Antoun Saada Coueter and his wife Wasilla and grew up near Damascus. At the age of eleven he entered St. Anne's seminary in Jerusalem , which is run by the White Fathers . Between 1914 and 1918 all the seminaries had to close and the seminarians returned to their hometowns. After the First World War , Coueter continued his school education in Damascus and studied philosophy and theology . He was ordained a priest on July 20, 1925 and then carried out pastoral and pastoral activities in Beirut , Damascus and Cairo . For some time he worked at the Sisters School of Besançon (École Besançon) as a pastor and director of Arabic studies. In 1936 he was sent to the Melkite parish in Detroit ( USA ) as an archimandrite .

Bishop of Brazil

In 1939 Elias Coueter came to Brazil and continued building up the churches. First he took over the Melkite congregation in the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro and received approval to celebrate worship in a Roman Catholic church in Rio de Janeiro in the Byzantine rite . This community also gave him an office and accommodation. He organized the construction of his own parish church , later the Church of St. Basil, the construction of which began in 1941 and which was handed over to the Melkite community by the archbishop in 1946 . By 1951, the community, which was made up of Melkites , Maronites , Ukrainian Catholics , Russian-Greek Catholics , Romanian-Greek Catholics and Syrian Catholics, had grown significantly. During the same period, the parish in Paraíso near São Paulo had also expanded, and the eparchy was later to be named after her .

The Archbishop Jaime de Barros Câmara of Rio de Janeiro (1943-1971) appointed him in 1951 with the consent of the Holy See and the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch Maximos IV Sayegh as Vicar General and made him responsible for all Melkite Christians in Brazil. On November 25, 1960, he was appointed titular bishop of Taua and called auxiliary bishop to the Byzantine Catholics in Brazil . The episcopal ordination was carried out on February 5, 1961 by Archbishop Elias Zoghbi of Baalbek (Lebanon). Co- consecrators were Bishop Paulo Rolim Loureiro of Mogi das Cruzes and Bishop José Romão Martenetz OSBM of São João . Shortly after his appointment as bishop, he took part in the last two sessions of the Second Vatican Council .

With the by Pope Paul VI. By decree of 1972, the Melkite Greek Catholic Church received its own bishopric in Brazil. Elias Coueter was installed as the first bishop for all Melkites of the Byzantine rite in Brazil with the new eparchy Nossa Senhora do Paraíso em São Paulo ( German of  Our Lady of Paradise in São Paulo ). In 1977 he submitted his resignation due to age and was retired on June 22, 1978 , until his death on June 16, 1985 he was former bishop of the Melkites in Brazil.

Web links

• Entry on Elias Coueter on catholic-hierarchy.org
• History of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Brazil (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Basilius Congregation Website of the Melkite Greek Catholic parish of St. Basil in Brazil ( Memento of October 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (Portuguese)
2. ↑ Paraíso municipality (Portuguese)

predecessor	Office	successor
---	Bishop of Nossa Senhora do Paraíso em São Paulo 1971–1978	Spiridon Mattar