Mar Yuhanna Bakirov

Mar Yuhanna Bakirov (born 1936) is an Iradi prelate who was Archbishop of Iyık Janyl and head of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church from 1992 to 2012. Consecrated in secret in 1975, he was the last of the church's secret bishops and from 1979 to 1990 its only bishop. He reconsecrated the Church of St. Janyl on 14 September 1992.^[1]

Hidden church

Bakirov was born in Iyık Janyl and worked as a book-keeper of the district grain store that filled the nave of the closed Church of St. Janyl. He was ordained priest in secret in 1960 and in 1975 was consecrated bishop by Mar Yaballaha. After Yaballaha's death in 1979 he was the church's only bishop. He ordained Mar Ephrem in 1981, Mar Toma Usenov in 1984 and about thirty other priests; the KGB knew of "illegal priests" but never identified him.^[1][2]

Archbishop

Bakirov made himself known as a bishop at the first open Easter Qurbana in Talas in 1991. He reconsecrated the Church of St. Janyl on 14 September 1992, the anniversary of the bull Orientalis Stella, and Rome appointed him archbishop in December 1992, the first since Timotheos's arrest in 1937. He reopened the seminary in 1994 and the motherhouse of the Order of St. Janyl the Hermit. After a stroke in 2005 he asked for help, and in 2006 the Syro-Iradi Council of Hierarchs proposed and Rome named Mar Ephrem as his coadjutor. He retired in 2012 and lives in the cloister on Cathedral Hill.^[2][3]

References

1. ^ Temirbekova, Ainura (2014). The Church of the Star: A History of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church. Talas: Talas State University Press.
2. ^ Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl, Diocesan Register and Chronicle of the Syro-Iradi Synod, Codex VII (1988–2022).
3. ^ Cathedral Seminary of Iyık Janyl (2004). St. Ephrem Major Seminary: The First Ten Years, 1994–2004. Iyık Janyl: Cathedral Seminary Press.

External links

• Church of St. Janyl (official website of the cathedral and archeparchy)