Mar Timotheos Alimbekov

Mar Timotheos Alimbekov (1869–1938) was a bishop of the Iradi church who negotiated its union with Rome. Under the bull Orientalis Stella, issued by Pope Pius XI on September 14, 1931, the church was received into full communion as the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church sui iuris that kept its East Syriac rite, and Iyık Janyl became its metropolitan see. Timotheos became its first archbishop. He was arrested during the purges of 1937 and, according to church records, died in custody the following year.^[1][2]

Early life and episcopate

Timotheos was born in Iyık Janyl and studied Classical Syriac and scripture with the clergy of the Church of St. Janyl. Church biographies state that as a young man he spent several years among the East Syriac communities of Urmia in Persia, where he met Catholic missionaries. He was consecrated bishop of Iyık Janyl before the First World War and led the church through the 1916 revolt and the Russian Civil War.^[1]

Union with Rome

Soviet rule made open contact with Rome impossible. From 1926 Timotheos corresponded with the Holy See through intermediaries at papal nunciatures abroad; church histories name contacts in Istanbul and Tehran. His surviving letters, held in the diocesan archives, ask for recognition of the church's Syriac liturgy, its synodal government and its own calendar, including the feast of St. Janyl. The negotiations lasted five years and ended with the bull of 1931. The bull was not published in the Soviet Union, and news of it reached the parishes by word of mouth.^[1]

Soviet response and death

Soviet authorities treated the union as evidence that the church answered to a foreign power. Officials linked the Vatican, which had concluded the Lateran Treaty with Italy in 1929, with "fascist" influence, and historians connect this suspicion with the severity of anti-religious repression in the Iradi SSR during the 1930s. The churches of Iyık Janyl were closed and the cathedral became a grain store. Timotheos was arrested in 1937 together with his senior clergy, most of whom were executed. The security service file on his case has not been published, and his place of burial is unknown.^[2]

The Church of St. Janyl was reconsecrated on September 14, 1992, the anniversary of the bull, and Timotheos is commemorated in Iyık Janyl on that date. The historian and politician Amanbek Alimbekov was a member of the same family.^[3]

See also

• Zarina Alimbekova

References

1. ^ Iyık Janyl Diocesan Archives. 'Correspondence of Mar Timotheos Alimbekov with the Holy See, 1926–1931.' Iyık Janyl.
2. ^ Talas State University Press (2021). Orientalis Stella and the Soviet State: The Iradi Church, 1931–1941. Talas.
3. ^ Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl, Diocesan Register and Chronicle of the Syro-Iradi Synod, Codex VII (1988–2022).