Elias Zoghby

Zoghby retired on October 24, 1988, at age 76. He remained an active proponent of ecumenism following his retirement, urging the reunification of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and the Antiochian Orthodox Church. He died on January 16, 2008, in Lebanon; his funeral was held on January 19 at St. Paul Basilica in Harissa.

Zoghby's ecumenical initiatives gained visibility in May 1974 with the exchange of visits between the Melkite Catholic and the Antiochian Orthodox synods, which met simultaneously in Lebanon.

Following the Council he opposed the acceptance of a Roman cardinalate by Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV Sayegh, stating that the leader of an Eastern Catholic church should not hold a subordinate Latin-rite office. In protest, Zohgby resigned his position as patriarchal vicar of Alexandria. Maximos IV died in 1967; his successor, Maximos V Hakim, was a friend of Zoghby's and a fellow Egyptian. In August 1968 the Melkite Synod elected Zoghby archbishop of Baalbek to replace the recently deceased eparch, Joseph Malouf. Installed as archbishop there on September 9, 1968, he led the small eparchy during the Lebanese Civil War. In 1982 he was kidnapped by pro-Iranian terrorists.

While attending Vatican II Zoghby spoke to the Council on September 29, 1965, about the trauma of the innocent spouse in cases of adultery. Zoghby suggested a solution which considers adultery and abandonment as causes for the dissolution of marriage:

In 1951 he was elevated to archimandrite while serving in Alexandria. While there he was threatened with arrest for preventing the execution of a sentence passed by a Sharia tribunal. On August 27, 1954, he was named auxiliary bishop of Antioch; then, on September 2, 1954, he was appointed Titular Archbishop of Nubia. Zoghby was formally consecrated bishop on November 21, 1954, when he was elevated to Patriarchal Vicar for the See of Alexandria, Cairo and the Sudan.

As the leader of the Melkite church in Egypt Zoghby was a vocal proponent of rights for Christians, and opposed the limitations placed on them by that country's Law of Personal Statutes. The Nasser regime imprisoned him on December 20, 1954, for his public opposition to the statutes. Released shortly afterwards, he continued to serve as patriarchal vicar in Egypt.

Zoghby related in Memoires that he first received a vocational call at age sixteen. With his parents' blessing he left for seminary in the summer of 1928, going to Jerusalem to study with the White Fathers at the Melkite seminary of Saint Anne. He was ordained a priest at Saint Anne Melkite Basilica in Jerusalem on July 20, 1936, following which he was appointed a professor of Arabic Literature and Mathematics at the seminary. He later returned to Cairo as a parish priest.

Elias Zoghby (January 9, 1912 – January 16, 2008) was the Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop of Baalbek and a leading advocate of Catholic-Orthodox ecumenism. He is best known for his ecumenical interventions during Vatican II and his 1995 Profession of Faith, known as the Zoghby Initiative, which attempted to re-establish communion between the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church while maintaining communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

Elias Zoghby was born on January 9, 1912, in Cairo. His mother, Hanne Ishak Yared, was a Melkite Greek Catholic and his father, Abdallah Mikail Zoghby, was an Antiochian Orthodox convert and former Maronite Catholic. The couple had recently emigrated from Lebanon and settled in Cairo's Arb-el-Guenena neighborhood. The area had a Melkite church nearby which his parents attended. Elias and his siblings were baptized into the Melkite faith and raised in a devout household, attending liturgy daily, reading the bible together as a family and praying the Office every afternoon.