Melkites Today

The Melkites are that branch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch which has been in communion with the See of Rome since 1724. Our country of origin is Greater Syria (today Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine) and Egypt. We follow the same Byzantine rite as our fellow Ukranian, Ruthenian and Romanian Greek Catholics but are a distinct local Church with our own Patriarch and Holy Synod. There are approximately one million Melkites in the Middle East and other parts of the World, notably in North and South America and Australia. We are the indigenous Catholics of the Holy Land, where we have three dioceses (Jerusalem, Galilee, and Amman).

Our name, Melkite, was coined derisively in the same way Catholics in the west were once called Papists. It came into use after the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. The Christians in the Middle East who upheld the Christological doctrine of that Council as did the Byzantine “Melko,” or Emperor, were dubbed Melkites: the King’s people.

The Melkite form of church government is identical with that of an autocephalous (self-ruling) Orthodox Church. Our bishops are elected by the Holy Synod, which meets annually and is composed of the Patriarch- currently His Beatitude, Maximos V (Hakim)- and all the bishops. The Patriarch is the direct successor of St. Peter the Apostle who may be called the first Bishop of Antioch, and our Melkite community are descendants of those same faithful who “were first named Christians.” (Acts 11:26).

Melkites in America

Melkites started coming to the United States in numbers at the end of the nineteenth century as refugees from Turkish tyranny and oppression. The great majority settled in industrial towns of the northeast. Our first parish in the western hemisphere was St. George in New York City, established in 1889. Since then, new churches have been built throughout the country.