Cardinal Musa Daoud
Patriarch of Antioch of the Syriac Catholic Church
Former President of the Council of Eastern Churches
Bishop of the Diocese of Homs, Hama, Nabek and its environs
He was born on September 18, 1930 in the village of Maskana in Homs Governorate, Syria.
From parents: Daoud Musa Daoud and Kahla Elias Debbas.
He has two brothers and three sisters, all of whom are married
He continued his primary studies under the guidance of the parish priest of Maskanah, Father Hanna Makdisi
In December 1941, he joined the Seminary of Saint Ephrem and Saint Mubarak in Jerusalem, where he received preparatory and secondary lessons from the Benedictine Fathers.
After the 1948 war, he moved with his fellow seminarians to Deir Al-Shorfa in Lebanon, where he finished his final year of high school.
After that, he continued his philosophy and theology lessons in the aforementioned seminary from 1949 to 1955
He was ordained a priest by the laying on of the hand of the Most Merciful Patriarch Cardinal Mar Ignatius Gabriel I Tebbouni on October 17, 1954, in the St. George Syriac Catholic Cathedral in Khandaq Al-Ghamiq – Beirut, with seven other priests. Of the eight, five became bishops, and two became patriarchs.
He moved to serve his diocese in the city of Homs in 1955, where he carried out the following tasks:
Christian education teacher at St. Joseph School, assistant parish priest, then school director and parish priest, then secretary of the archbishopric, and finally general episcopal vicar. Year 1962
In 1962, his bishop, Mar Theophilus Youssef Rabbani, sent him to Rome, where he studied at the Lateran University and obtained a teaching license in canon law in 1964.
In 1970, Patriarch Ignatius Antoun II Hayek appointed him as Secretary of the Patriarchate in Beirut, where he continued his work for seven consecutive years.
At the Synod of 1977, he was elected Bishop of the Diocese of Cairo, and was ordained on September 18 of the same year in the new Church of Our Lady of Deliverance in Deir Al-Shorfa. He was inaugurated in Cairo in the Church of Saint Catherine (Heliopolis) on October 7, 1977.
He served the Diocese of Cairo for seventeen years, and among the works he carried out: he built the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Cairo, built the parish house in Heliopolis, and added a spacious wing to St. Michael’s School in Al-Zahir in Cairo. He established a clinic called “Setna Maryam Clinic,” which includes all medical branches.
He appointed three priests to the diocese. He delivered sermons, spiritual retreats, and lectures, and taught church law at the “Maadi” Institute for Coptic Catholics and at the Institute for Philosophical and Theological Studies in the Sakakini neighborhood.
At the 1994 Synod, he was transferred from the Diocese of Cairo to the Diocese of Homs, Hama, Nabek, and its environs, and was installed in the Church of Our Lady of Deliverance in Zaidal, Homs, on September 18, 1994.
He was appointed as an advisor to the Committee to Reconsider Ecclesiastical Rights for a period of fifteen years, then he was appointed a member of the same committee for a period of five years. He was appointed a member of the Congregation for Doctrine and Faith in Rome for several years. In 1995, he was appointed a member of the Permanent Synod and a member of the Supreme Court for Judicial Affairs, in the Syriac Catholic Church. In 1997, he was appointed Chairman of the Joint Charitable Committee in Syria. He participated in the 1998 Synod of Bishops for Asia, in Rome.
In the 1998 Synod, he was elected Patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church on October 13
He was ordained Patriarch on Sunday, October 25, 1998 in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Annunciation – Mathaf – Beirut.
He adopted the slogan of his patriarchate: “Father, Head, and Shepherd.”
He made many pastoral visits, including dioceses and parishes of the Syriac Catholic Church in the countries of the East and the world. He worked on organizing the patriarchal and episcopal departments and the special law of the Syriac Catholic Church, and the internal regulations of the Synod of Bishops of the Syriac Catholic Church, as well as the project for the bishops’ retirement fund and the retirement of priests, in addition to the internal regulations of the pastoral councils.
He organized the responsibilities at the Monastery of Al-Sharafa, consolidated the foundations of work, studies, and spirituality in his major and minor seminaries and in the monastery of the Ephraimite Sisters. He renewed the men’s monastic order of Al-Aphramiyya, and revived the Association of Al-Sharafa Veterans.
He launched a magazine called “The Patriarchal Journal,” which speaks in the name of the Patriarchate, and is concerned with chronicling and archiving the activities and works of His Beatitude the Patriarch, in addition to theological, spiritual, liturgical, cultural, historical, and other topics.
In accordance with the slogan of openness and cooperation, Patriarch Musa Daoud achieved a meeting with the Syriac Orthodox Church through a joint pontifical committee, which opened new horizons of fraternal interaction and pastoral and liturgical cooperation.
He went to India, where he visited the Malankar Syriac Catholic Church, opening a historical page in the fraternal cooperation between these two Syriac churches
On November 25, 2000, Pope John Paul II appointed Patriarch Musa Daoud as President of the Holy Synod of Eastern Churches. On February 22, 2001, Patriarch Daoud received the cardinal rank. He worked in the Eastern Synod from 2001 to 2007 and maintained his Eastern dress and Eastern spirit.
On June 9, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Cardinal Musa Daoud from the presidency of the Eastern Council due to him having reached the legal age
He wrote two books: “O Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?” and “Six and a Half Years in the Vatican.”
On the morning of Holy Saturday, corresponding to April 7, 2012, Patriarch Cardinal Mar Ignatius Moussa I David answered the Lord’s call and moved to the heavenly chambers in Rome, at the age of eighty-two years.