From Eastern Christian Churches

The Ethiopian Catholic Church

by Ronald Roberson, C.S.P.

Catholic missionaries arrived in Ethiopia in the 14th century, and Pope Eugenius IV sent a letter to the Ethiopian Emperor on August 28, 1439, inviting him to unity with the Catholic Church, but such efforts were unsuccessful. In the 16th century, Islamic attacks, culminating in 1531, threatened the very existence of Christian Ethiopia. The Emperor appealed for assistance to the Portuguese, who sent sufficient military support from Goa to defeat the Islamic armies definitively in 1543.

The Portuguese in Ethiopia were accompanied by Jesuit missionaries, who began an effort to bring the Ethiopian Orthodox Church into union with the Catholic Church. They focused their activity on the political elite of the country including the Emperor himself. Largely through the efforts of Fr. Peter Paez, Emperor Susenyos converted and declared Catholicism the state religion in 1622. The following year Pope Gregory XV appointed another Portuguese Jesuit, Affonso Mendez, as Patriarch of the Ethiopian Church. A formal union was declared when Mendez arrived in the country in 1626. But this union was to last only ten years. Mendez imposed a series of latinizations on the Ethiopian liturgy, customs, and discipline, which Susenyos then tried to enforce with cruelty and bloodshed. This led to a violent public reaction. Susenyos died in 1632. In 1636 his successor expelled Mendez, dissolved the union, and either expelled or executed the Catholic missionaries. The country was closed to Catholic missionary activity for the next 200 years.

In 1839 limited activity was resumed by the Lazarists and Capuchins, but public hostility was still very strong. It was only with the accession of King Menelik II to the throne in 1889 that Catholic missionaries could again work freely in the country. Catholic missionary activity expanded in Ethiopia during the Italian occupation from 1935 to 1941, as it had earlier in Eritrea which had been under Italian control since 1889.

The present ecclesiastical structure of the Ethiopian Catholic Church dates from 1961, when a metropolitan see was established at Addis Ababa with suffragan dioceses in Asmara and Adigrat. The largest concentrations of Catholics are in Addis Ababa and Asmara. After Eritrea achieved independence on May 24, 1993, about half the faithful found themselves within that new country. Two new dioceses were created in Eritrea in 1995, at Keren and Barentu, from territory taken from the diocese of Asmara. Thus there are now three dioceses in Ethiopia and three in Eritrea.

The Catholic bishops of Ethiopia and Eritrea compose a single episcopal conference whose headquarters are in Addis Ababa. In these countries all the jurisdictions are geographical, and include worshipping communities of both the Latin and Ethiopian traditions. The three dioceses in Eritrea and three in central and northern Ethiopia generally use the Ethiopian (Ge’ez) rite, and fall under the jurisdiction of the Oriental Congregation. In southern Ethiopia there are five Apostolic Vicariates and two Apostolic Prefectures mostly of the Latin rite with about 500,000 faithful under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. The membership figure below is the sum of the six dioceses in the two countries that depend on the Oriental Congregation. In 2006 there were 205 parishes in the six dioceses served by 176 secular priests and 438 priests who belonged to religious orders. There were also 1,046 women religious and 142 seminarians.

In Eritrea there are seminaries in Asmara and Keren. In Ethiopia all the major seminarians attend the Capuchin Franciscan Institute of Philosophy and Theology in Addis Ababa, except those from the diocese of Adigrat, which has its own major seminary. In 1919 Pope Benedict XV founded the Pontifical Ethiopian College within the Vatican walls and designated St. Stephen’s Church directly behind St. Peter’s Basilica for the use of the college.

Location: Ethiopia and Eritrea
Head: Archbishop Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel (born 1948, appointed 1999)
Title: Archbishop of Addis Ababa of the Ethiopians
Residence: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Membership: 223,000
Website: www.ecs.org.et