Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church - Colonial Years

Colonial Years

In the 1920s the Italian colonial power in Eritrea started the first attempts to found a separate Eritrean Orthodox Church. Until then the Orthodox Church in Eritrea was practically part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, with a strong link to Aksum in Tigray as the traditional centre of the Church structure. This was, however, against the interest of the colonizer: Eritrea as a separate colony was supposed to have a church independent from the neighbor's influence, in order to be fully integrated into the colonial system. The separate Eritrean Church was short-lived. When it was still not fully established, the Italians invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and then formed a unified territory called Africa Orientale Italiana, encompassing Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian Somalia. Eritrea was unified with the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray, and both Orthodox Churches unified. This unification remained valid even after the defeat of the Italians and their loss of the whole territory in 1941.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church was granted autocephaly by Pope Joseph II of Alexandria, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria in 1950. At that time Eritrea was a separate colonial territory under British administration, but nevertheless the Orthodox Church in Eritrea was simply made a division of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, as the British had no interest to strongly separate the Eritrean highlands from the Ethiopian highlands, corresponding to their politics of unification of the highlands (with the option of separation of the Muslim lowlands of Eritrea and their inclusion into the British Sudan).