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“It seems to us that ours is a depressed presbyterate, and has been developing as such for 12 years, due to the leadership of Bishop Stika,” they wrote, saying that the consequences included their own mental health struggles.

“I know that, as a presbyterate in the midst of God’s people, you suffered greatly in the not-distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the Church in the most vulnerable of her members,” according to a translation of his prepared remarks.

The bishop, with his presbyterate and diaconate, fitted to him as the strings to a harp, in the words of St. Ignatius, this was the instrument by which our Lord chose to take hold of the world.

Either Egypt or Syria would satisfy this condition, and in favour of Syria is the fact that the presbyterate there was to a late date regarded as a rank rather than an office.

To the years of his presbyterate and episcopate belong the great mass of homilies and commentaries, among which those On the Statues, and on Matthew, Romans and Corinthians, stand out pre-eminently.