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SPRING
2013
31
We regret to inform you that Dr
Ramez Azoury ’49
passed away
in January 2013. IC staff and faculty send their deepest condo-
lences to the Azoury family.
A great loss:
Patriarch Ignatius IV
(Hazim) of Antioch
Born in 1920 in the village of Mhardeh in Syria,
Ignatius Hazim was the son of a pious Greek Or-
thodox Syrian Arab Christian family. He attended
IC from 1936 until 1942 and graduated from the
French Philosophy Program. He continued his stud-
ies at the American University of Beirut and was
reportedly highly influenced by his philosophy pro-
fessor Charles Malik in the matters of philosophy
and spirituality. In 1942, he co-founded the active
Orthodox Youth Movement of Lebanon and Syria.
In 1945, he traveled to Paris and graduated from
the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute.
He was consecrated to the episcopacy in 1961 and
elected Metropolitan of Latakia in Syria in 1970.
In 1979 under the name of Ignatius IV, he became
the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, the third
ranking hierarch of the Orthodox Church after
the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria,
effectively making him the one hundred and sev-
entieth Patriarch after Saint Peter.
In 1988, he founded the University of Balamand
and served many years as its dean.
Known for being simple, direct and down to earth,
Hazim broke several traditions in the Orthodox
Church including inaugurating an unprecedented
practice of frequent communion.
In 1971, Hazim was appointed the Orthodox
Metropolitan of the Syrian city of Latakia. In
1979, at the height of Lebanon’s devastating Civil
War, Hazim was appointed Patriarch of the Levant
and Antioch.
He published a number of books on theology and
earned honorary doctorates from Paris’ Sorbonne
as well as from theology academies in St. Peters-
burg, Russia, and Minsk, Belarus.
During an official visit to the Patriarch’s residence
in May 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medve-
dev awarded the Patriarch the Russian Order of
Friendship.
On December 5, 2012, he died in St. George’s
Hospital in Beirut following a stroke and was
buried in Syria. He was
92 years old.
In the memory of our beloved friend
Mark Sawaya ‘99
, who passed away
and left us too early. Mark, also called
affectionately Markus, was known for always being cheerful,
generous…and wearing shorts in the middle of Winter. After
graduating from AUB, he joined the Murex office in Paris,
working in a job he loved, in a city he adored. Whatever he
was doing, wherever he was, he was always the same, ever so
genuine and ever so kind. Perhaps that’s why he is so special.
Wael Bekdach ‘99