His Beatitude The Most Reverend Lord Archbishop Anthony Aneed, Patriarch of the Byzantine Catholic & Orthodox Church of the Americas

Archbishop Anthony Joseph Aneed was born on February 27, 1879 in Beirut, Lebanon. As a young man without material advantages, he obtained employment at the railway station. He was an active layman within the Melkite Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch (an of the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church in communion with the Church of Rome), and became a member of the Eastern Patriarchal Delegation to the Great Centennial in honour of the 1,500th anniversary of the death of Saint John Chrysostom. In 1908, Aneed was a participant in a ceremony of the Delegation at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, presided over by Pope Pius X and with the participation of Patriarch Cyril VIII of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and Metropolitan Archbishop Athanasius Sawoya of Beirut and Gebeil (Byblos). Later on that year, he was appointed as secretary to Archbishop Sawoya.

On June 11, 1909, Aneed was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Athanasius Sawoya in the presence of Bishop Agapios Maloof of Baalbeck and a group of monks of the Order of St. Basil at the Monastery of Saint George, Makeen, Mt. Lebanon. Father Aneed's gifts as a singer were considered to be of particular value to the Church. The next year on October 29 1910, Father Aneed was elevated to the position of Exarch of the Archdiocese of Beirut and Gebeil, and in 1911 moved to the United States to begin this phase of his work.

Father Aneed settled in New York, and began missionary work in Brooklyn where Melkite parishes had started to form. Soon after his arrival, Archbishop Sawoya visited the United States (against the wishes of the Pope) and stayed with Aneed for some time. On October 9, 1911, Archbishop Sawoya consecrated Aneed as Assistant Bishop in his private chapel at Brooklyn. While Melkite Patriarch of Antioch Cyril IX Mogabgab (1925-1947), fully recognized this consecration, the Vatican opposed it.

From March 1915, Bishop Aneed presided over the Syrian parish of St George’s Church, W. State Street, Milwaukee. On June 14, 1918, Bishop Aneed was formally titled "Exarch" by from Archbishop Sebastian Messmer of Milwaukee. In the following year, Exarch Aneed visited Archbishop Sawoya in France, and published “Syrian Christians. A Brief History of the Catholic Church of St. George in Milwaukee, Wisc. and a Sketch of The Eastern Church” (St. George Church, Milwaukee 1919) with a preface by Archbishop Messmer. In 1921, Exarch Aneed left Milwaukee to establish and pastor a new parish at St Ann’s, New London, Connecticut, where he would remain until 1934. Returning to New York later that year, Exarch Aneed was subconditionally consecration (purely for ecumenical reasons) at the hands of Archbishop Sophronios Bishara of the Holy Eastern  Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church in North America (The American Orthodox Catholic Church).

He was active in his priesthood in New York until 1942, when he moved to San Francisco and built up a ministry to expatriate Syrian-Lebanese Christians. Convinced that his flock was not adequately being served by the extant denominations, and that the Greek Melkite Church should break from the subjugation of Rome, he sought a path to independence. Exarch Aneed established co-operation with Archbishop Lowell Paul Wadle of the American Catholic Church of Laguna Beach and Archbishop Edgar Ramon Verostek of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church, as well as with Prince-Abbot Edmond I. Further co-operation was secured with Archbishop Henry Kleefisch, an attorney who had received consecration from the Russian Orthodox Church and became a bishop under Exarch Aneed, Archbishop Wallace de Ortega Maxey of the Ancient Christian Fellowship and Apostolic Episcopal Church, and Bishop Charles Hampton, formerly of the Liberal Catholic Church.

On September 10, 1944, Archbishops Aneed, Wadle, and Verostek established the American Concordat Exarchate, with Aneed as its Exarch. On the aforementioned date, the three bishops united and established The Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox Church of the Americas from the foundation of Archbishop Aneed’s work in California. It was stated that the object of this body was “to free the Melkite Church, if possible, from foreign domination, and to give it Freedom under the authority of Jesus Christ to go into all the world and preach the Gospel of the Love of God.” The intention was to restore the Melkite tradition to its position before union with Rome.

At a Synod on April 1, 1945, at St Francis’ Church in Laguna Beach, California, Archbishop Aneed was elected Primate of the Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox Church of the Americas. He was enthroned as Patriarch Antionius Joseph 1st on January 1, 1946. On the same occasion, Patriarch Aneed assisted by Archbishops Wadle and Kleefisch conditionally consecrated Prince-Abbot Edmond 1st, appointing him as "Titular Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia in the Byzantine Catholic Church", and enthroned him then and there as Grand Master of the Order of the Crown of Thorns and Archbishop of San Luigi. This was a formal re-establishment of the ecclesial jurisdiction of San Luigi after the repudiation of the Syrian Orthodox Church published in 1938.

On August 29, 1948, Patriarch Aneed opened the Seminary of St Anthony, The Star of the Desert, at Sunnymead, California. By this time, the Concordat had expanded into the Federation of Independent Catholic and Orthodox Bishops (FICOB), a body into which bishops of other churches professing the Nicene Creed and practicing the sacramental life were accepted and granted additional commissioning in the successions embodied therein. 

On June 5, 1960, Patriarch Aneed celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his priesthood at the Cathedral of the Merciful Savior, San Diego, California. By the following year he was reported to be in very poor health, and Deacon James B. Gillespie, (Officier OCT), then wrote of him saying “Bishop Anthony is quite old but not always so inactive. He has been called a 'true son of the desert'…When he does get a chance, he will celebrate in public, but he is rather far from an altar at the present time – except that in his home. Rome has courted him for years, but he will not relinquish his wife. It seems they made their last big attempt in 1955 through Bishop Buddy of San Diego.”

In September 1961, it was announced that Patriarch Aneed would come out of retirement and take over the Church of the Merciful Savior in San Diego, but this appears to have been short-lived. His Beatitude Patriarch Anthony Joseph Aneed went home to be with the Lord on August 24, 1970. His Beatitude was survived by his wife, Helen. He continues to be memorialized by the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.