All Oriental Orthodox churches, including the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, were started when an apostle met Jesus Christ, the Creator and Savior of the world.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church agrees with all three councils—Nicaea (325 A.D.), Constantinople (381 A.D.), and Ephesus (431 A.D.—that said Jesus was the Son of God and rejected Arius’ formula. However, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church rejects the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), presided over by Pope Leo I, which promotes the doctrine of the “two natures” in opposition to the “one
There was concern that if a native person was appointed bishop, he might be seduced and become preferential in his authority to people who were related to him by blood. (4) Because Ethiopians were prohibited from holding such posts by the late fathers’ theology.
In 1926, following the passing of Abuna Mathewos, Emperor Haile Selassie I, subsequently known as Ras Tafari, started negotiating for the appointment of an Ethiopian local bishop to be the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In May 1929, five Ethiopian bishops were bishoped for the first time in the history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, following an agreement between His Holiness Patriarch Cyril V and the Holy Synod of the Coptic Church. Sadly, during Mussolini’s five-year war (1935–1940), the Italian army killed all five bishops.
