STRIKING FIGURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 37, 14 February 1939, Page 8

STRIKING FIGURE.

MELBOURNE PRIEST.

SYRIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

SERVICE FOR ADHERENTS.

With thick, greying beard and flowinjr hair, a Syrian priest who is nowvisiting Auckland is so striking a figure that lie looks for all the world as if he had just stepped out of the frame of some holy picture.

He is the Very Rev. Archimandrite Antonious Mobayed. of St, Nicholas' Syrian Onhodox Church, Melbourne, and he is concluding one of his regular visits to the scattered community' of members of the Church in New Zealand.

Next Sunday the Archhiumdr'te will celebrate Mass in St. Thomas' Church, Union Street, at 9 o'clock in the morning. He said to-day that he hoped adherents living in country districts, together witli those in the city, would attend the service, in which the Greek, English, Russian and Syrian languages will be used.

Father Mobayed, who expects to return to Melbourne in a few weeks' time, said he had enjoyed his stay of two montlis in the Dominion. He had found the country most attractive, and was very happy at being able to meet its people.

In his 56 years the Archimandrite has travelled far from his native Syria. He was educated for the Church at an academy in Kiev, in Southern Russia, the Syrian Orthodox Church being identical in its tenets with the Greek Orthodox Church, to which most Russians belonged. He remained in Russia for some years, and in the flays before the revolution he preached several times before the Czar, who awarded him a decoration for activities in connection with a Moscow orphanage.

For the past seven years his home has been in Melbourne, where he ministers to about 30 families. He will visit New Zealand again in two years' time.