Felix Mary Ghebreamlak

Who was Felix Mary Ghebreamlak?

The Venerable Felix Maria Ghebreamlak, O.Cist, was an Eritrean monk and priest of the Ethiopian Catholic Church who worked to bring the Cistercian Order to his homeland. A process seeking his canonization is underway.

Ghebreamlak was born on 23 June 1895 in the village of Guifa in Eritrea, then an Italian colony, to parents who were Ethiopian-rite Catholics and who raised him in that faith. At the age of 12, he entered the Minor Seminary at Cheren. He was ordained to the priesthood as part of the secular clergy on 22 September 1918.

Ghebreamlak then worked to bring the Monophysite and Orthodox Christians back into union with the Roman Catholic Church. Since Ethiopians respect monastic life, he sought to continue his work in Ethiopia as a monk. When, in 1925, he was sent to the Ethiopian College in Rome to serve there as confessor for the seminarians, he took the opportunity to learn more about Benedictine life. He studied monastic theology and sought advice from the Abbot of St. Paul outside the Walls, the Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, O.S.B..

Casamari Abbey, a Cistercian monastery, accepted his project of establishing a monastery in his homeland, and Ghebreamlak entered there as a candidate on Dec. 7, 1930. As he entered the monastic enclosure he is said to have kissed the threshold and exclaimed: "These are the gates of paradise." He was joined in 1931 by a group of twelve fellow Ethiopian candidates.