Abuna Paulos Papers from Professor Karlfried Froehlich

Abuna Paulos (1935-2012) was born Gebre Medhin Wolde Yohannes on November 3, 1935 at Adwa, in Tigray Province, Ethiopia. He entered the Abba Garima Monastery at the age of six as a trainee deacon, later becoming a monk and then a priest. He was educated at the Theological College of the Holy Trinity in Addis Ababa. He continued his studies at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, Yonkers, New York (1962-1965), earned a bachelor of divinity degree at the Berkeley Divinity school at Yale (1966). In 1970 Abune Paulos began studies for a Master of Theology degree at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1974 Abune Paulos was summoned back to Ethiopia by the Patriarch, Abune Theophilos. He arrived back in Ethiopia shortly after the revolution and was annointed bishop. He was arrested by the new communist regime and imprisoned until 1981. In 1983, Abune Paulos returned to Princeton Theological Seminary to complete his doctorate (1988). During the years that Abune Paulos lived in the United States and completed his doctorate at Princeton Theological Seminary, he started churches for Ethiopian refugee communities in New York city, Los Angeles, San Diego and Dallas. In 1992 Abune Paulos was chosen to lead the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. As Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, His Holiness Abuna Paulos, Fifth Patriarch and Catholicos of Ethiopia, Ichege of the See of St. Tekle Haymnot, Archbishop of Axum led Ethiopia's 40 million Orthodox Christians for the next twenty years until his death in 2012. At the time of his death, Abune Paulos was one of the seven presidents of the World Council of Churches(WCC). He had also served as a member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches and the Faith and Order commission.