Pope John VI of Alexandria was the
74th Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark.
His name was John Abu al-Majd ibn Abu Ghaleb ibn Sawiris (يوحنا أبو المجد بن أبو غالب بن سويرس). He was layman. It was said that he was a widower, and after his wife's death he chose to remain celibate. He kept the church headquarters in the Hanging Church in Old Cairo (الكنيسة المعلقة). He proscribed a canon that a church could not accept a priest unknown to them without having a consent statement from his bishop. He was buried in the Church of the Darag (كنيسة الدرج) under the tomb of Pope Zakharias, the 64th Coptic Patriarch (1004-1032 AD).
In 1210, his envoys reached the city of
Lalibela in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
, where they met
Emperor
An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...
Gebre Mesqel Lalibela
Lalibela ( gez, ላሊበላ), regnal name Gebre Meskel (Ge'ez: ገብረ መስቀል ; 1162 – 1221), was King of Zagwe dynasty, reigning from 1181 to 1221.Getachew Mekonnen Hasen, ''Wollo, Yager Dibab'' (Addis Ababa: Nigd Matemiya Bet, 1992) ...
.
[Taddesse Tamrat, ''Church and State in Ethiopia'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 62]
He was the last
Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria to consecrate a bishop for
Western Pentapolis, as the people converted to Islam under the rule of the Arabs.
References
John VI of Alexandria
1216 deaths
13th-century Coptic Orthodox popes of Alexandria
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