Saint Raphael Hawawini is the first Orthodox bishop to be consecrated in the New World. He was born in Beirut on 11/8/1860 AD to two pious Orthodox parents, Michael and Mary Hawawini. He was born after the events of 1860 in which many Christians were slaughtered and Saint Joseph of Damascus was martyred. His parents saw with their own eyes the killing of hundreds of the parishioners and priests. Michael Hawawini and his pregnant wife Mary fled from Damascus to Beirut, and there our saint saw the light.
He completed his primary and secondary education at the Patriarchal Seminary in Damascus and his theological studies at the Ecumenical Patriarchal Theological Seminary in Halki, part of Constantinople. Later, he studied at the Kiev Theological Academy in Imperial Russia, was an assistant to the Archbishop of the Antiochian Patriarchate in Moscow, and taught at the Theological Academy in Kazan.
During that time, the Arab community in the American community was growing at a high rate, so the head of the Antiochian Orthodox Charitable Organization, Dr. Ibrahim Arbili, spoke with the saint and with the head of the Amtoush in Moscow about the arrival of our saint to the United States of America. The great saint came in 1895 AD and immediately upon his arrival began building a headquarters for the Antiochian Orthodox mission. He was appointed to the New York Archdiocese, and later this headquarters became the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Brooklyn. He contributed to the development of the Antiochian community by traveling within the United States and organizing the parishes. In 1898, St. Raphael printed the prayer service book in Arabic and placed it in the churches for use in prayers.
In the same year, the saint, as the oldest, represented the rest of the mission in receiving the new Archbishop Tikhon. Speaking in his sermon during the Divine Liturgy on December 15, 1898, he said about Archbishop Tikhon: “He was sent here to shepherd the flock of Christ, the Russians, the Slavs, the Antiochians, and the Greeks, scattered throughout the continent of North America.” The Archbishop, who later became the Russian Patriarch, was known for his calmness, piety, and wise leadership. He wanted Archimandrite Raphael to become Bishop of Brooklyn to shepherd the Antiochian Orthodox. The Holy Russian Synod agreed, and he was ordained bishop in St. Nicholas Cathedral in Brooklyn on March 13, 1904.
For the next sixteen years Bishop Raphael continued his service to the Antiochian parish in America, assisting Archbishop Tikhon and then his successor in the administration of the Orthodox mission. He laid the foundation stone for St. Tikhon's Monastery in North Canaan, Pennsylvania, the first Orthodox monastery in the New World. He wrote many books and articles, translated liturgical texts from Greek into Arabic, and founded the magazine Al-Kalima in 1905 to spread the word to places he could not reach. It is now the official publication of the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America.
After twenty years of service in North America, at the age of fifty-five, he died on 2/27/1915. No less than 25,000 believers from Antioch, Russia, and Greece participated in his funeral.
He was first buried in a crypt under the Holy Table of St. Nicholas Cathedral 3/7/1915, then he was buried in the Antiochian section of a cemetery in Mount Olivet near Brooklyn 4/2/1922, and finally his holy remains were placed in the Light Resurrection Cemetery in Antiochian Village near Ligonier in Pennsylvania 8/15/1988. He was officially declared a saint on 3/29/2000 and was celebrated as a saint in the Orthodox Church on 5/29/2000 at St. Tikhon Monastery.
The Church commemorates him on February 27.
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Birth of Deeb Jabbara
25/12/2004
