Bidawid, Raphael I (1922–2003) [Chald.]
Patr. from 1989–2003 and scholar. He was born in Mosul and joined the seminary there. He was ordained priest in 1944 in Rome where he was studying philosophy and theology. Between 1948 and 1956 he taught in Mosul and in 1957 was consecrated bp. of ʿAmadiyya where later he witnessed the mass exodus of Christians from the disputed territories of North Iraq. In 1966, he was appointed bp. of Beirut. He was elected patr. in 1989 as Raphael I Bidawid. He established Babylon College. His Ph.D. dissertation was published as Les lettres du patriarche nestorien Timothée I (Rome, 1956). He also edited 4 Ezra for the Leiden Peshitta edition (Vetus Testamentum Syriace, sample ed. [1966]; 4.3 [1973]), and he was the editor of the reprint of Y. A. Manna’s Syriac-Arabic dictionary (1975).
Sources
- G. A. Kiraz, ‘Mar Raphael Bidawid’, Hugoye 7.1 (2004).