Government announces 'election' of new Orthodox patriarch.

LOS ANGELES – In still another police raid in the Eritrean capital, local authorities last weekend arrested 80 members of the Mehrete Yesus Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Asmara at the close of a Sunday worship service.

A U.S. couple as well as several teachers from India working in Eritrea were among those reportedly detained on Sunday (April 29).

But local sources confirmed that after four days of incarceration, the two U.S. citizens were released yesterday and allowed to return to their home in Asmara.

“They have been told not to teach or preach, but they haven’t been asked to leave,” a source who requested anonymity stated.

Church leaders identified as still under custody included the Rev. Zecharias Abraham, the Presbyterian church’s pastor, and a church elder named Mikias Mekonnen. Some of the jailed worshippers were women.

Initiated by former Sudan Interior Mission staff and affiliated with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the indigenous MehreteYesus Church has existed in Eritrea since the late 1940s.

According to a statement posted today by Release Eritrea, a London-based advocacy group, Abraham has served as head of the Eritrean Evangelical Alliance since the May 2004 arrest of his predecessor, Full Gospel Church leader Haile Niazgi.

The latest raid against Eritrea’s Protestant community came only five days after the government Ministry of Information posted a notice on its website, www.shabait.com, announcing that the Eritrean Orthodox Church had elected a new patriarch.

Renegade Bishop Named Patriarch

Declaring Bishop Dioskoros of Mendefera to be the fourth patriarch of the nation’s Orthodox Tewahdo community, the statement claimed he had been “unanimously approved” by the church’s Holy Synod on April 19, with his formal installation set for Pentecost Sunday on May 27.

But according to an April 23 posting on the opposition website www.asmarino.com, “When the bishops in attendance expressed a desire to bring the matter to a deliberation, they were told that the announcement was not open for further discussion.”

Signed by “priests, monks, deacons and the faithful of the Eritrean Orthodox Church,” the Asmarino statement warned: “The Eritrean people should be aware that the rights and beliefs of the two-million strong [Orthodox] church have been flagrantly violated once again; and the hijacking of the church by the government that has been underway for quite some time is now completed.”

In direct violation of the church’s canon laws, the Asmara government stripped ordained Eritrean Patriarch Abune Antonios of his ecclesiastical authority in August 2005, after he protested the imprisonment of three priests from the Medhane Alem Orthodox Church.

The government replaced him with Yoftahe Dimetros, a layman appointed as interim administrator of the church.