Archbishop Damianos of Sinai Resigns After 52 Years

Archbishop of Sinai Damianos. Credit: Giannis Kolesidis / AMNA

Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, Faran, and Raitho has officially resigned from his presumption arsenic Abbot and Archbishop, concluding a singular 52-year tenure astatine the caput of the Holy Monastery of Sinai.

In a statement, helium expressed his “full consciousness of the extremity of my 52-year term” and humbly submitted his resignation. The Archbishop has called connected the Sinai Fathers to “elect the champion and astir susceptible person” to win him, stressing the request for “unity and enactment of all, acold from idiosyncratic ambitions and obsessions.”

This resignation is the archetypal measurement successful a succession process that volition culminate successful the predetermination of a caller Archbishop. The wide assembly of the Monastery’s Fathers is scheduled for Sunday astatine 11 a.m. to elite his successor.

The announcement comes aft a caller improvement successful a struggle wrong the Monastery. Monks who had antecedently opposed Archbishop Damianos stated that they are withdrawing the ineligible appeals they had filed against the monks who enactment him, a determination that could awesome a solution to the long-standing disputes.

Months of turmoil astatine Sinai monastery

After months of turmoil astatine Mount Sinai’s Monastery of St Catherine, Damianos initiated the process of succession connected September 4, signaling his volition to measurement down. At 91, helium acknowledged that speculation implicit his enactment has fueled the monastery’s interior unrest.

“In reaching my ninety-first year, I recognize that galore wrong and extracurricular the Monastery are preoccupied with the inevitability of my succession,” Damianos said successful a statement. “This precise thought has been the existent origin of the interior situation that erupted wrong the Sinai Monastery.”