Episcopal ordination of Father Jacques Mourad

On Friday, 3 March 2023, the episcopal ordination of Father Yaacoub Edward (Jacques) Mourad, a monk from the Deir Mar Musa monastic community, who became the new archbishop of Homs in Syria, was celebrated. The liturgy, in the Syrian cathedral dedicated to the Holy Spirit, was presided over by the Syrian Catholic Patriarch Ignace Youssif III Younan.

Father Jacques Mourad was born in Aleppo on 28 June 1968. After entering the seminary in Charfet, Lebanon, training in theology and a licence in liturgy, he joined the Syrian Monastic Community of Deir Mar Musa Al-Habashi, of which he is co-founder with Paolo Dall’Oglio, the Jesuit priest, former student and teacher of PISAI, who disappeared in Raqqa in 2013. Ordained a priest in 1993 in Aleppo, in 2015 Father Jacques Mourad was captured and held prisoner by ISIS for five months, then managed to escape and take refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan where he continued his mission serving Christian refugees. His publications include Un moine en otage, Éditions Emmanuel 2018, which won the 2019 Grand Prix Littéraire of the Oeuvre d’Orient.

Ph. credits Eugenia Di Gregorio