Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Metropolitan JONAH

As Matushka has already indicated, His Beatitude Metropolitan JONAH is our new primate. I have some very basic stats for those of you that are interested in that kind of thing. I will only include the top-four by ballot count (there were lots more receiving only 1 or 2 nominations).

1st Round of Nominating by 'the people' (everybody writes 1 name on ballot):
Archbishop JOB - 212
Archbishop SERAPHIM - 33
Bishop BENJAMIN- 75
Bishop JONAH - 233

So... because one candidate did not receive 2/3 of the nominations, we went to a second round.

2nd Round of Nominating by 'the people' (everybody writes 2 names on ballot):
Archbishop JOB - 364
Bishop TIKHON - 75
Bishop BENJAMIN- 140
Bishop JONAH - 473

You can see that the people's choice was Bishop JONAH, with Archbishop JOB in the second position. It is important to note that we do NOT 'elect' a bishop in the Orthodox Church - bishops make bishops. Our process allows for our hierarchy to hear the voice of the people before they begin their own deliberations. The previous two times that a Metropolitan was enthroned, the bishops did not go with the people's primary choices; it was the retired Metropolitan THEODOSIUS over Archbishop DMITRI, then the retired Metropolitan HERMAN over Archbishop SERAPHIM.

There was a fair bit of real joy and hope with the election of our new Metropolitan. You can read more about him through the OCA website, but I can provide a few details. He is newly elevated to the episcopate (11 days ago) from Archimandrite of St. John of Shanghai monastery in California, and has spent the previous 14 years as a monastic. He is well known for his pastoral love and care. Importantly, he was the one sent by the Holy Synod last night to answer the really tough questions that people had - he carried himself very well, answered the questions, and left many feeling very positive about him.

That's enough for now... this was just supposed to be a little update for you all.

I remain, your servant

5 comments:

elizabeth said...

Wow. I am glad to hear. I am sure we will hear much more soon...

RW said...

Thanks for the update Dn Kurt.

Kassianni said...

Axios! Axios! Axios!

that's wonderful.

thank you for the update.

Matthew Francis said...

Glory to God!

Bro Cyp said...

One can read more of what he has written to get an idea of how he thinks:

http://www.monasteryofstjohn.org/articles.htm