Elijah (Karam)

Documented biography facts are extremely scarce and fragmentary; some information, such as, for example, the date of birth is contradictory in different sources. The parent of the future metropolitan was a merchant who owned a quarry.

According to the testimony of relatives, Salim graduated from elementary school for 10 years, where he studied Arabic and French .

March 12, 1918 became the subdeacon of the Patriarch of Antioch Gregory IV (Haddad) .

In 1921 he entered the Theological Seminary at the Balamand Monastery in Northern Lebanon, which he graduated in 1923 .

On August 5, 1923, he was ordained deacon by Patriarch Gregory IV in Damascus ; in December sent to Metropolitan Beirut Gerasim (Massara) at the request of the latter.

On August 6, 1926, he was elevated to the rank of archdeacon of the Beirut diocese; in 1930 - archimandrite .

In the early 1930s, he was a representative of the Church of Antioch at the Serbian Patriarch, where he made acquaintances with many figures of the Russian Church Abroad .

January 13, 1935 in the cathedral of Damascus consecrated to the Metropolitan of Biblical and Botrys (diocese of Jbeil and al-Batrun).

Present in 1935 at the celebrations in Belgrade on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the clergy of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), head of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad .

During the Second World War, "reoriented" to the unconditional support of the Moscow Patriarchate and contributed a lot to creating the image of the USSR as a country where there was never and could not be religious persecution.

The first trip of Metropolitan Elijah to the USSR , according to available documents, took place in November - December 1947 , at the invitation of the Moscow Patriarchate . The protocol side of the first days of the visit is described in detail in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate No. 1 for 1948 ^[2] (the continuation promised on page 57 did not follow). The guest served in many churches in Moscow , Leningrad , Kiev and Odessa ; personally received from Patriarch Alexy I , parishes, priests and parishioners many valuable icons, many in expensive salaries. The patriarch wrote about the guest to his sister: “He rides, burdened with gifts. In particular, I gave him: an vestment, a miter, a white hood and an icon in pearls, a large portrait in a frame, a bowl, a diskos and the whole device <...> In addition, it has my fur coat (squirrel) ” ^[3] . November 20, Elijah visited the Mausoleum of V.I. Lenin .

The extremely cordial meeting of the Metropolitan, judging by the documents declassified in the 1990s , is explained by the fact that the leadership of the USSR and the Patriarchate at that time were in the process of preparing for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the autocephaly of the Russian Church and the Conference of Heads of Orthodox Churches dedicated to it; the latter was attached great importance as a foreign policy event designed to usurp leadership in universal Orthodoxy at the Department of Constantinople . The ancient Eastern Patriarchates considered the very fact of convening the Conference by the Moscow Patriarch as an encroachment on the prerogative of Constantinople and did not intend to attend it at the highest level. In his conversations with Patriarch Alexy, Karam managed to create an undoubtedly false impression that the Patriarch of Antioch did not intend to follow Fanar in the wake. So, in his letter to the Chairman of the Council for ROC Affairs G. G. Karpov on November 20, 1947, the Patriarch wrote: “<...> M [itropolitan] Elijah volunteered to be our semi-official (not official) mediator between us and P [atriar] Hami Greeks - and here, in his opinion, the decisive factor is the degree of our ability to give them money <...> the dominant motive of his statements is the question of financial assistance: money, liturgical items, brocade, panagia, crosses, miter, etc. We spoke in detail about Compounds, and about the future Conference. ” ^[4]

The second visit of Karam took place in July 1948 , as part of a delegation to celebrate the 500th anniversary of autocephaly . At a festive dinner given on July 15, 1948 by the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in honor of the participants in the Meeting, Metropolitan Elijah proclaimed, raising a toast, that Orthodoxy should be strong and united, such as said I.V. Stalin, declaring that he wants "Strong Orthodoxy." The hall flinched. “Maybe Joseph Vissarionovich did not say these words. But I personally believe that only thanks to Stalin the prosperity of the Russian Orthodox Church and Orthodoxy in the whole world was ensured ” ^[5] .

In August - September 1954 he accompanied the Patriarch of Antioch Alexander III on his trip to the USSR .

On March 7, 1958, he visited the USSR Embassy in Lebanon and asked for help in repairing the five temples of the diocese, treating his brother in the USSR and repeated his request for his invitation to the USSR; the latter was refused with reference (in interdepartmental correspondence) to “the reception of a large number of church delegations, including the Church of Antioch, arriving to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the restoration of the patriarchate in the Russian Church” ^[6]

In the summer of 1960 , during his visit to the USSR ^[7] , he participated in the consecration of Archimandrite Nicodemus (Rotov) as Bishop of Podolsky.

The 5th visit - in 1963 , to Pskov . Since at that time the Russian Orthodox Church underwent uniform defeat (churches were closed in hundreds and thousands, and monasteries - in dozens), only the most trusted "witness" could be allowed into the USSR, who would then announce the "freedom and prosperity" of religion to N.’s rule S. Khrushchev .

In May 1968 - as part of the delegation of the Church of Antioch to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the patriarchate in the Russian Church.

Died April 11, 1969 , on Good Friday; buried in the temple of Bhamdun, near Beirut, where he served. During the civil war of the 1970s, the temple was blown up.

Now the remains are buried in the home church at the old city hospital. Relatives of Elijah are building a new temple on the site of the old.

In the late 1990s, in the media, and then in monographs published with the blessing of prominent hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, the legend about the special mission of Elijah Karam was widely spread, linking his name with the Kazan icon in the Prince Vladimir Cathedral of Leningrad , his personal meeting with Joseph Stalin ^[8] .

The source of the legend, apparently, is Archpriest Vasily Shvets, who met with Elijah in Pskov in 1963 and presented it without any reference to sources in the article “Miracles from the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God”; it is also stated by Sergey Fomin in the book “Russia before the Second Coming” ^[9] . The journal “ Science and Religion ” ^[10] , created in 1959 “for the dissemination of the scientific and materialistic worldview, the struggle for the formation of communist spiritual values,” provided its pages to Vasily Shvets for the presentation of his information.

There is no documentary evidence of Karam’s meeting with Joseph Stalin, although it can be seen from the correspondence between Patriarch Alexy and George Karpov that the Metropolitan asked for such a “date” in 1947.

The oldest clergyman of the St. Petersburg diocese, Archpriest Vasily Ermakov , who was an eyewitness to the arrival of Elijah Karam in Leningrad, spoke of him as "a crook who collected and took away the Russian national treasure" ^[11] .

Memoirs of Metropolitan Pitirim about the half of the 1940s:

Now, speaking of that era, the Metropolitan of the Lebanese Mountains, Elijah Karam, is often mentioned - that he was a prayer book, a great friend of Russia, etc. Maybe, of course, that was the only way, only half-jokingly called him “a robber”. He will see the icon on the analogue: “Oh Mother of God! Mother of God! ”- rushes to her, kisses, mumbles something in her own language, - the content of the speech is reduced to giving him an icon. And you won’t refuse ... In Odessa, Metropolitan Boris [Vic] —that is an intelligent person — and he was reckless to invite him to his cell - so then I had to give almost all the icons from the wall. I saw all this when I was still an enthusiastic young man, and the impression remained for life. Then, when I was in the East, I saw many Russian icons there - in gold salaries with precious stones. Still would! Kolchitsky then broadcast from a pulpit: “Orthodox! The Eastern Patriarchs come to us, who pray for us at their ancient shrines. You can bring them the icons you have as a gift. ” And the poor, who still had something else, suffered ... I always say that I, of course, have many sins, but in one thing I am clean: I have never presented a single thing to them ^[12] .

According to historian Andrei Kostryukov , “‹ ... ›It is enough to read the correspondence published today by Patriarch Alexy I with G. G. Karpov or the recollections of Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk (Nechayev) to understand that he was more likely a swindler than a god-seer. And Metropolitan Elijah began telling his fabulous stories after the war, when he first visited Russia. And his correspondence with the Soviet leadership, which he allegedly conducted, was not documented in any way ” ^[13] .

• Imperial Order of St. Anne of I degree ( 1936 , “Russian Imperial House”) ^[14]
• Order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Grand Duke Vladimir I degree ( 1959 , ROC ) ^[15]

• Suheil Farah, Nikolai Gavryushin. Metropolitan Elijah (Karam) and Russia . - M.: Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, 2005 ISBN 5-94625-113-9
• Elijah (Karam) Orthodox Encyclopedia , T. XXII.
• Andrey Kuraev The Great Patriotic War: Miracle and Tales
• "رؤيا المطران كرم وستالين وأيقونة سيدة قازان المثلث الرحمات المتروبوليت إيليا