The Maronite (Catholic) Church

The Maronite (Catholic) Church

The Maronite Church cherishes its 1600 years of faithfulness to the apostolic tradition of early Christianity. Founded around the year 400, it is distinguished by being the only Eastern Church that has remained in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church over the centuries, without any division or splitting. Its origins lie in the Syriac Patriarchate or Church of Antioch, the city where “for the first time the disciples were called Christians” (Acts 11: 26). It is also the only Church named after a saint – Saint Maron, a Syriac monk lived in the 5th century.

Within the Catholic Church, the Maronite Church has maintained its peculiarities: first of all, it has its own ancient Eastern rite and a liturgy of its own, anchored in the Syro-Antiochian tradition, which best preserved the language and customs of the first apostolic community: part of the liturgy is still carried out today in Aramaic, or Syriac, the same language that was spoken by Jesus, and is otherwise held in Arabic.

There are more than 10 million Maronites around the world, while in the Holy Land they are about 11,000. They have lived in the Middle East region, and predominantly in Lebanon, since the time when Saint Maron lived.