Assyrian Patriarch

The first Patriarch in history to visit the U. S. docked in Manhattan last week, settled at the Gramercy Park Hotel. His Beatitude Eshai Mar Shimun, 119th Patriarch of Assyria and head of the Church of the East (which Westerners know as the Nestorian Church), had come to see his 70,000 fellow countrymen in the U. S., do something if possible for his persecuted brethren elsewhere. The Assyrian Christians have had a long record of persecution. They have been a minority in the mountains of Kurdistan and the plains of Syria and Iraq since Mohammedanism's rise.

Saint Thomas, the doubting Apostle, founded the Church of the East in the First Century. A great missionary church, it made millions of converts in distant India and China, then slowly dwindled. Its split with the Western Church came when it accepted the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ propounded by Nestorius, a Fifth-Century Patriarch of Constantinople. Pope Celestine I declared the doctrine heretical. Nestorius was deposed, but Nestorianism continued to flourish among the Assyrians. Aramaic, the language which Christ spoke, is still the liturgical language of the Assyrian Church.

Cambridge-educated, Mar Shimun also speaks perfect English. Unlike many a Patriarch, he has a short black beard instead of a long white one, is young (33) and good-looking. The Assyrian Patriarchate has been hereditary for 600 years, descends from uncle to nephew since no Patriarch marries.

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