Ethiopian Orthodox Church members battle for possession of Maxfield Avenue premises
BY BASIL WALTERS, Sunday Observer
The rift in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church widened on Friday after a group representing one fraction of the church went to its headquarters at 89 Maxfield Avenue in Kingston and, with the help of bailiffs, took control of the premises.
The group — which is loyal to [Aba Gebremedhin (formerly Aba Paulos)] in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and which recently won a law suit to claim the Maxfield Avenue headquarters — turned up with new locks and keys to reclaim the premises, and was met with hostility by the other members currently occupying the premises.
An animated Kes Wolde Dawitt (right) who led
the operation to repossess the Maxfield Avenue
headquarters of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,
caught vigorously objecting to the presence of
the Sunday Observer. Looking on are members
of his flock including its trustee and financial
secretary Sarapheal Hemmings, at left.
(Photo: Joseph Wellington)
Since 1992 there has been a split in the church when the mother church appointed a new patriarch and Archbishop Paulos [Aba Gebremedhin] to replace the incumbent Mekrios, who was ill. A section of the church, led by the late Abuna Yesehaq Mandefro who was in charge of the Western Hemisphere branches of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, contended that the decision by the mother church was a violation of its cannon, which stipulates that an incumbent Archbishop cannot be replaced once he is still alive.
That led to a schism in the first ancient African Christian Church, and separation of its members, with those following the late Abuna Yesehaq declaring their independence of the mother church.
Here in Jamaica, those members loyal to the mother church stopped from fellowship at the Maxfield Avenue headquarters. They began meeting instead at the St Mary Anglican Church on Molynes Road — still observing the ancient rituals of the Orthodox Church. But some of these members, sources say, were automatically excommunicated from the Abuna Yesehaq’s-influenced Maxfield Avenue congregation.
The Molynes Road fraction eventually filed a law suit to claim possession of the headquarters, and on June 15 the court ruled in their favour.
The administrators of the Maxfield Avenue headquarters have since appealed, and a hearing has been set for next Tuesday.
“I’m not really happy about what is happening,” resident priest at the Maxfield Avenue HQ, Kes Gabre Selessie (Fitzgerald), told the Sunday Observer.
“It is a matter that have to go back to the court. they came here while an appeal is pending for the 27th of this month. We will have to wait until the court resettle this matter,” Fitzgerald added.
But Sarapheal Hemmings, a trustee and financial secretary of the Molynes Road fraction told the Sunday Observer that “the rite of possession has been issued by the court for us to come and picket. for the past two weeks they have been issued, and it’s just today we decided to come and takeover. So, we come this morning with the bailiff to just take possession of the place; we’re not here to run the people or anything. We’ve locked up the place now and we’re going to try to arrange a meeting with the administrators to see how we still can workout this thing peacefully,” Hemmings said.
However, Theophilus Dawkins, a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church for over 30 years, accused the Molynes Road group of using “brute force.
“I am one of the foundation members here in Jamaica. Now, what they come and done this morning, is to try to dig off the locks and put on new locks, and try to force people to give up the keys for them to put on their locks. And we, the people, were telling them that we don’t want them.”.
“Dem come wid brute force, dem come wid di belly a di beast come tek ova di church,” he added.
The other members of the Maxfield Avenue fraction echoed similar sentiments.
One church sister also complained that a funeral service was about be prevented because the Molynes Road fraction had stated that they (from Maxfield Avenue) should no longer use that building.
“We have a funeral here for a member that passed off. She is supposed to be buried on the 25th; dem lick off the lock, put on dem lock and sey we can have no more service here. And she is a member here from she was young. Her name is Sistah Dotti and her baptism name is Amarian. She is from Trench Town,” the church sister said.
However, Fitzgerald told the Sunday Observer that the Molynes Road fraction had made a concession for the funeral to go ahead today, adding that this was the last service he would be allowed to conduct there.