The Most Reverend and Most Holy Father,  Patriarch of Antioch, the Great City of God,  of Syria, Lebanon, Arabia,  Cilicia, Mesopotamia and all the East;  Father of Fathers, Shepherd of Shepherds, Master of Masters,  and Thirteenth of the Holy Apostles, our Father and Chief Shepherd.  May God Grant Him Many Years!		الأب الأقدس الطوباوي و الجزيل الاحترام، المُقام من الله بطريركاً على مدينة أنطاكية العظمى، و سوريا و العربية و كيليكيا و البلاد الكرجية و ما بين النهرين و سائر المشرق. أبو الآباء و راعي الرعاة و رئيس الرؤساء، ثالث عشر الرسل القديسين. أبونا و رئيس رعاتنا. لتكن سِنوه عديدة
	Ignatios IV (Hazim) أغناطيوس الرابع (هزيم)

   The present patriarch of Antioch, His Beatitude, Ignatios IV (Hazim), was born in 1921 in the village of Mhardey near Hama in Syria. He is the son of a pious Orthodox family, and from an early age was attracted to service in the church.
   While studying in Beirut, Lebanon, for a literature degree, he entered the service of the local Orthodox diocese, first by becoming an altar server, then a deacon. In 1945 he went to Paris where he graduated from the St. Sergius Theological Institute. From his time in France onwards he has been moved not only by a desire to pass on the deposit of the faith, but also to take Orthodoxy out of its unhistorical ghetto by discovering in its Holy Tradition living answers to the problems of modern life.
    On his return to the Middle East, he founded the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Balamand, Lebanon, which he then served for many years as dean. He sought to provide the patriarchate with responsible leaders who had received a good spiritual and intellectual training and who were witnesses to an awakened and deeply personal faith.
   In addition to Arabic, he also speaks fluent English and French. He was one of the founders of the very active Orthodox youth movement of Lebanon and Syria in 1942, through which he helped to organize and lead a renewal of church life in the patriarchate of Antioch. The movement worked at the heart of the church helping ordinary believers to rediscover the personal and communal meaning of the Eucharist through a practice of frequent communion, which had become extremely rare.
   He became bishop in 1961 and metropolitan of Lattakia in Syria in 1970. The new metropolitan was a simple, reserved and friendly man, who manifested a deep and courageous straightforwardness. His style broke with the former tradition of episcopal grandeur and he inaugurated an authentic practice of frequent communion.
   On 2 July 1979, under the name of Ignatios lV, he became the Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, the third ranking hierarch of the Orthodox Church after the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria, and the one hundred and seventieth Patriarch after Saint Peter.
   As patriarch he has given a new dynamism to the Holy Synod and sought to ordain bishops who were close to the people, motivated to develop the Church's ecclesial and spiritual life, and detached from political factions.