‘If bishops speak for war, then who is left to speak for peace?’

In Ethiopia, divisions in the Orthodox church, once a unifying force in a country fraught with conflict, pose a new threat, finds Katharine Houreld

A rock-hewn church in Lalibela (Katharine Houreld/Washington Post)

For years, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has been one of the few institutions that helped bind this war-riven country together, unifying disparate ethnic groups around worship as their bitter differences threatened to tear Ethiopia apart.

But this year, the church has been battling to heal its own divisions, triggered by language, politics, resources and war. The schisms, peppered with biblical references to betrayal, are far from theoretical. They reflect the wider tumult in Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most-populous country.

In February, church officials said at least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded after rebel bishops from the southern Oromia region, home to the Oromo ethnic group, tried to install new clergy they had ordained as bishops in defiance of Abune Matthias, who heads the country’s church as its patriarch. Oromia is Ethiopia’s largest region and its most populous.