Historical
The Greek-Melkite Catholic community includes three "ages", according to the dates of establishment on Canadian soil: The ancients, from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th; the group of the years 1950-1960; the last waves from 1975 to 1992, due to instability in the Middle East in general.
The community has some basic characteristics: it is very diverse, including Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians. It is distributed across Canada, from ocean to ocean, with areas of concentration, especially in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, Francophone and Anglophone, she is involved in the life of the country, thanks especially to the oldest groups.
In 1960, Father Georges Coriaty (Basilien Salvatorien) was appointed parish priest of Saint-Sauveur, in Montreal, which was then a small parish of a thousand souls. Full of zeal, the new parish priest will accelerate the movement already impressed by his predecessors, also Salvatorians, and watch with more and more collaborators, priests and laity, with the progress in number and quality of work in the service of the parish of St. Saviour.
When, in 1972, Father Coriaty was appointed by Pope Paul VI an apostolic visitor to all Catholic Melkites in Canada, he extended his activity to the parishes or missions of Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver, while the ikonomos Habib Kwaiter (then exarch and protosyncella of the eparchy until his death, December 17, 2009), also Salvatorian, has been dealing with the same zeal in Ottawa since 1970.
Their perseverance and that of all their collaborators is crowned by the creation of a Greek-Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Canada. In 1980 the Holy Synod was called by Pope John Paul II to designate a "terna" for the apostolic exarchat of Canada. Archbishop Michel Hakim will be appointed on October 13, 1980 by the Pope. And on September 1, 1984, the apostolic exarchate of Canada was saved.
On June 30, 1998, Bishop Sleiman Hajjar was appointed second savings bank, succeeding Archbishop Michel Hakim. But on March 10, 2003, Bishop Sleiman Hajjar died suddenly at the age of 52. Archbishop Michel Saydé, ikonomos, was appointed administrator as administrator until the installation of the Bishop Ibrahim M. Ibrahim savings bank on October 11, 2003.
The new eparchial cathedral was inaugurated and consecrated on October 28, 2007 by His Beatitude Patriarch Gregorios III.
