Orthodox Churches in Jamaica

The earliest recorded Orthodox services served the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants who settled in Jamaica from the late nineteenth century. In August 1910, according to a Gleaner report quoted by the Orthodox History website, Fr Antonio Michael, travelling with the authority of the Patriarch of Antioch to visit Syrians across the islands, celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Arabic at Kingston Parish Church, by arrangement with the Anglican rector. The community never obtained a resident priest, and most of its descendants became Anglicans. In 1913–14 the Jamaican-born Fr Raphael Morgan, born Robert Josias Morgan in Chapelton, Clarendon, and ordained a Greek Orthodox priest in 1907 as the first Black Orthodox priest in America, spent several months in Jamaica giving talks; in December 1913 he celebrated the Divine Liturgy with the crew of a visiting Russian ship.

Haile Selassie’s visit, 1966

The Ethiopian church’s Jamaican story begins with Emperor Haile Selassie I’s state visit. His Ethiopian Airlines flight landed at Palisadoes Airport, Kingston, at 1:30 pm on Thursday 21 April 1966, a day now marked by Rastafari as Grounation Day. Some 100,000 people, many of them Rastafari, crowded the airport and surged onto the tarmac, and the Rastafari leader Mortimo Planno was asked to calm the crowd. During the visit the emperor gave gold medallions to Rastafari elders and received a group of them, among them Planno and probably Joseph Hibbert, in private audience. He is thought to have encouraged them to learn about the Ethiopian Orthodox faith. Abuna Yesehaq later recalled that the emperor told him, “There is a problem in Jamaica…. Please, help these people.”

The 1970 mission

Laike Mandefro, born in Addis Ababa in 1933, was then an archimandrite heading the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the United States. Joseph Hibbert, one of the founders of Rastafari in the 1930s, who called his own ministry the “Ethiopian Coptic Faith”, formally invited him to teach the Rastafari about Orthodoxy. Mandefro arrived at Palisadoes on 14 May 1970 with Deacons Collin R. Tomlin and Gebre Hiwot to establish a branch of the church, and was met by about 300 people, many in Rastafari dress. The Jamaica Observer and a 2000 World Council of Churches report both date the church’s establishment to May 1970; some secondary sources give 1969 or 1972. In 1971 Mandefro named Hibbert a “Spiritual Organizer”.

Rastafari responded in large numbers. By different accounts Mandefro baptised about 1,200 people in his first year, or about 2,000 Rastafari in the early years. He baptised in the name of the Holy Trinity and not, as some elders wished, in the name of Haile Selassie, and at first he did not demand that converts renounce their belief in the emperor’s divinity. That changed after the Ethiopian revolution of 1974, when candidates for baptism in Jamaica were required to renounce that belief and cut their locks. The church held its first Western Hemisphere conference in Kingston in August 1974, at Webster Memorial Hall on Half Way Tree Road, and photographs in the National Library of Jamaica show its Easter processions at Webster Memorial Church in 1975 and a New Year’s service closing the third annual conference at 89 Maxfield Avenue in January 1976. The church was incorporated by a Vesting Act of 4 May 1978, which named its trustees and vested its property in them.

Bob Marley and the 1970s

Mandefro was invested as Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere in 1979, and is known by his archiepiscopal name, Abuna Yesehaq. He became spiritual adviser to the Marley family; according to an interview with him, Rita Marley and the children converted in 1972. Bob Marley was baptised by Abuna Yesehaq on 4 November 1980, about six months before his death, taking the baptismal name Berhane Selassie (“Light of the Trinity”). The archbishop rejected suggestions that the singer was baptised only because he was dying. Marley’s funeral on Thursday 21 May 1981 began with an Ethiopian Orthodox service at Holy Trinity, Maxfield Avenue, from 8 to 9 am, followed by the service at the National Arena at 11 am, conducted in Ge’ez, Amharic and English.

In the same interview Abuna Yesehaq said that Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer had been baptised into the church but later renounced it, and that the church buried the singers Jacob Miller and Garnett Silk at their families’ request.

Schism and the court case, 1992–2014

In 1992 the Holy Synod in Addis Ababa elected Abuna Paulos as patriarch in place of the ailing Abuna Merkorios. Abuna Yesehaq, then archbishop for the Caribbean and Latin America, regarded the replacement of a living patriarch as uncanonical and on 22 September 1992 declared independence from the mother church. The synod rescinded his appointment and on 8 October 1992 appointed Abuna Gabriel in his place; in January 1993 Abuna Gabriel named a new board of trustees for the Jamaican church.

The split divided the Kingston congregation. Members loyal to Addis Ababa stopped worshipping at Maxfield Avenue and met for years at St Mary’s Anglican Church on Molynes Road, while the Maxfield Avenue congregation stayed with the archbishop. In January 1994 the trustees sued Abuna Yesehaq over control of the church’s property, bank accounts and funds. He died in Newark, New Jersey, on 29 December 2005, aged 72, and at his own request was buried in Jamaica: his funeral at the National Arena on 20 January 2006 drew politicians, entertainers and Rastafari, and his mausoleum is at Holy Trinity. On 5 June 2007 Justice McIntosh Donald ruled for the Addis-loyal trustees, and in November 2007 that group entered the Maxfield Avenue headquarters with bailiffs and changed the locks. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal by the administrator of the archbishop’s estate in 2011 (Dobson v Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jamaica, [2011] JMCA Civ 39), holding that the question was a legal one about trustees under the 1978 Act. The Gleaner later reported that the local dispute ended in 2014 with a change of administration, which caused further disaffection.

Since 2011

In July 2018 the two Ethiopian synods, in Addis Ababa and in exile, were reunited after 27 years. The Gleaner reported that the Jamaican church, then led by its administrator Kes (Father) Wolde Dawit and its resident priest Kes Gabre Selassie Fitzgerald, welcomed the news, while noting that many members had stopped attending regularly during the long separation.

In late 2022 Archbishop Thaddaeus of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Caribbean and Latin America visited Jamaica, conducted services and ordained new priests. He met Prime Minister Andrew Holness on 30 November 2022 and the culture minister, Olivia Grange, on 1 December. One subject was regularising ownership of the land on which the Maxfield Avenue church stands, which the prime minister asked to be dealt with quickly. In 2023 the Jamaica Observer profiled Emahoy Hannah Maryam TekleHaimanot, from Bull Bay, reported to be the first Jamaican consecrated as an Ethiopian Orthodox nun, who directs the church’s home for the aged at Maxfield Avenue and hopes to found the first Ethiopian Orthodox monastery in the Caribbean and Latin America in Jamaica.

The Eastern Orthodox mission since 2015

A separate, Eastern Orthodox community grew from Jamaican converts who found Orthodoxy online. Its first member, Moses Myers, a former member of a Pentecostal Holiness church, became Orthodox in March 2014, and on 24 April 2015 the Holy Orthodox Archdiocese in Jamaica was set up as a vicariate of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Mexico, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. For its first years it was served by visiting American priests a few times a year. In 2019 the Greek priest Fr Socrates Demetriades of Thessaloniki spent several months in Jamaica; he described two small communities, in Kingston, where a family home had been turned into a chapel, and Runaway Bay, with nine adults and five children, all Jamaican converts, plus a few Greek, Slav and Lebanese residents.

On 15 December 2019 both communities voted unanimously to transfer to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), and Metropolitan Hilarion asked Bishop Luke of Syracuse to receive them. Some of the circumstances of the transfer were disputed by clergy involved. As of 2026 the Jamaican Orthodox Mission has two parishes: St Timothy the Apostle, Kingston, and St Moses the Black, on Lower Harbour Street, Falmouth, Trelawny (founded 2019), part of ROCOR’s Diocese of Eastern America. On 29 August 2026 Hieromonk Constantine (Myers) baptised and chrismated seven new members at St Moses the Black. Services are in English.

We found no record of a Coptic, Armenian, Syriac or Indian Orthodox parish in Jamaica.

Beliefs and worship

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is one of the oldest churches in Africa and was the state church of Ethiopia under Haile Selassie. Tewahedo, Ge’ez for “made one”, refers to its belief that Christ’s divine and human natures are united in one nature, the position of the non-Chalcedonian churches. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians recognise the sacraments and keep a demanding round of fasts, abstaining from meat, dairy and eggs on fast days. The church keeps both Saturday and Sunday as holy days, with Sunday the more important as the day of the resurrection. It follows the Ethiopian calendar, so Christmas (Genna) falls on 7 January and Timkat, the feast of Christ’s baptism, on 19 January. Worship in Jamaica uses Ge’ez, the ancient liturgical language, together with Amharic and English, with drums and chant; the University of the West Indies, Mona, has offered introductory Amharic courses through its Institute of Caribbean Studies, noting the language’s use in the church’s liturgy here. According to Abuna Yesehaq, the church teaches monogamy, regards concubinage as sinful, and does not accept the use of ganja.

The Eastern Orthodox mission follows the Byzantine rite of the Greek and Russian churches, with the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feasts, Vespers and Matins, and Byzantine chant sung in English.

Relationship with Rastafari

Many Jamaicans have long assumed that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is a Rastafari church, a misunderstanding noted in the World Council of Churches report of 2000. The two are distinct. Rastafari, which emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s (see Rastafarianism), regards Haile Selassie as divine; the church, of which the emperor was a member, regards him as a Christian monarch and baptises only in the name of the Trinity. Abuna Yesehaq refused to baptise in the emperor’s name, and from the mid-1970s candidates were required to renounce his divinity. Some Rastafari accepted Orthodox baptism and remain members; others rejected the church’s conditions or later left it. The church nonetheless supported the ideas of Marcus Garvey and Rastafari hopes of repatriation, according to its archbishop, and its feasts, liturgical drumming and Ethiopian identity remain part of Kingston’s Rastafari landscape. Our page on Rastafari covers the movement in full.

Organisation

Body	Tradition	Jamaican congregations	Oversight
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church	Oriental Orthodox	Maxfield Avenue, Kingston (headquarters); Mannings Hill Road; Ocho Rios, St Ann; Portland; Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland (2023)	Archdiocese of the Caribbean and Latin America; Holy Synod, Addis Ababa
Jamaican Orthodox Mission	Eastern Orthodox (Byzantine rite)	St Timothy the Apostle, Kingston; St Moses the Black, Falmouth (2026)	ROCOR, Diocese of Eastern America

The Ethiopian church in Jamaica is a corporate body under the 1978 Vesting Act, run by trustees and an administrator. The 2000 WCC report listed about six branches, in Kingston, St James, Portland, Westmoreland and St Catherine. In 2023 the head administrator of the archdiocese was Aba Gebreyesus WoldeSamuel Negatu, an Ethiopian monk. The Abune Yesehaq Home for the Aged, on the Maxfield Avenue compound, had five residents and room for nine in 2023.

Notable people

• Abuna Yesehaq (Laike Mandefro, 1933–2005): founder of the church in Jamaica in 1970, Archbishop of the Western Hemisphere from 1979, credited with establishing congregations across the Caribbean, North America and beyond; buried at Maxfield Avenue.
• Joseph Hibbert (1894–1986): Rastafari pioneer who invited Mandefro to Jamaica and was named a Spiritual Organizer of the church.
• Bob Marley (1945–1981): baptised Berhane Selassie in November 1980; his funeral began at Holy Trinity, Maxfield Avenue.
• Rita Marley: converted with her children in 1972, according to Abuna Yesehaq.
• Emahoy Hannah Maryam TekleHaimanot: reported to be the first Jamaican-born Ethiopian Orthodox nun; director of the church’s home for the aged.
• Fr Raphael Morgan (c. 1866–1922): born in Chapelton, Clarendon; the first Black Orthodox priest in America, who visited Jamaica in 1913–14.

Membership

No census has counted Orthodox Christians separately. In 2011 they were included among the 2,697,983 people in Jamaica in the census’s “Other” religion category, alongside many smaller groups, and the 2022 census religion tables have not yet been published. Figures from the churches and from reporting are scattered:

Year	Figure	Source
1970	About 300 people met Mandefro at Palisadoes	The Gleaner, This Day in Our Past
1970–71	About 1,200 baptisms in the first year (another account: about 2,000 Rastafari in the early years)	OrthodoxWiki; Wikipedia
2000	About six Ethiopian Orthodox branches	World Council of Churches report, cited by OrthodoxWiki
2019	Eastern Orthodox mission: 15 baptised and chrismated faithful, 7 catechumens, 30+ enquirers	Jamaican Orthodox Mission, via OrthoChristian
2023	Five active Ethiopian Orthodox branches	Jamaica Observer
2026	Seven baptisms at St Moses the Black, Falmouth (29 August)	OrthoChristian

Abuna Yesehaq was credited with baptising some 45,000 people across the Caribbean; no reliable figure for current Ethiopian Orthodox membership in Jamaica has been published.

Hurricane Melissa and current issues

We found no published report of damage to Orthodox churches from Hurricane Melissa on 28 October 2025, although Falmouth, home of the St Moses the Black parish, was among the towns hardest hit in the west. Continuing issues for the Ethiopian church include the regularisation of title to its Maxfield Avenue land, raised with the prime minister in 2022, the rebuilding of attendance after the 1992–2018 schism, and plans for a monastery. The Eastern Orthodox mission still depends on donations and rented or borrowed premises and has sought a full-time resident priest. We will add details as they are reported.

Timeline

Year	Event
1910	Fr Antonio Michael, an Antiochian priest, celebrates the Divine Liturgy in Arabic at Kingston Parish Church for Syrian immigrants
1913–14	Jamaican-born Fr Raphael Morgan visits; celebrates the Liturgy with Russian sailors
1966	Haile Selassie I arrives at Palisadoes, 21 April
1970	Archimandrite Laike Mandefro arrives 14 May and establishes the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jamaica
1974	First Western Hemisphere conference of the church, Kingston
1978	Church incorporated by Vesting Act, 4 May
1979	Mandefro invested as Archbishop of the Western Hemisphere (Abuna Yesehaq)
1980	Bob Marley baptised Berhane Selassie, 4 November
1981	Marley’s funeral begins at Holy Trinity, Maxfield Avenue, 21 May
1992	Abuna Yesehaq declares independence from Addis Ababa, 22 September; schism in Kingston
1994	Trustees sue the archbishop over church property
2005	Abuna Yesehaq dies, 29 December; buried at Maxfield Avenue after funeral on 20 January 2006
2007	Supreme Court rules for Addis-loyal trustees (5 June); headquarters taken over (November)
2011	Court of Appeal dismisses appeal
2015	Eastern Orthodox mission founded under the Metropolis of Mexico, 24 April
2018	Ethiopian synods reunited, July
2019	Eastern Orthodox communities vote to join ROCOR, 15 December
2022	Archbishop Thaddaeus meets the prime minister about Maxfield Avenue land, 30 November
2026	Seven baptisms at St Moses the Black, Falmouth, 29 August

Updates to this page

Date	Change
12 October 2026	Page created.

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Sources: Statistical Institute of Jamaica, Population and Housing Census 2011; The Gleaner, “This Day in Our Past” (14 May 2022, recalling 14 May 1970), “Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church unites after 27-year split” (Keteis Brissett, 29 July 2018), “Ethiopians, others celebrate Christmas on January 7” (12 January 2025); Jamaica Observer, “Church HQ ‘seized'” (24 November 2007), “Culture Minister meets with Archbishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church” (2 December 2022), “First Jamaican female monk” (Howard Campbell, 24 April 2023), “McKenzie saddened by Falmouth’s devastation” (10 November 2025); Court of Appeal of Jamaica, Lloyd Dobson v Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Jamaica [2011] JMCA Civ 39; National Library of Jamaica Digital Collection, Daily News photographs of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (August 1974, May 1975, January 1976); Carol Amaruso, “A holy man treads the ism-skisms of Rastafari”, Dub Missive, via Dubroom.org; Orthodox History, “An Antiochian priest in Jamaica, 1910” (22 February 2010) and “30 year anniversary of Bob Marley’s death” (11 May 2011); Fr Socrates Demetriades, “Greek Orthodox priest in Jamaica”, Orthodox Missionary Fraternity (September 2019); OrthoChristian, “Jamaican Orthodox Mission leaving Constantinople for ROCOR” (20 December 2019) and “Jamaican mission celebrates mass baptism” (3 September 2026); ROCOR Synod parish directory, St Moses the Black Orthodox Church; Fund for Assistance, “Paschal greetings from Jamaica”; Nation News (Barbados), on Abune Thaddaeus (July 2016); University of the West Indies, Mona, Institute of Caribbean Studies, Amharic course notice; Africa Is a Country, “When Haile Selassie went to Jamaica” (April 2016); OrthodoxWiki, “Yesehaq (Mandefro) of the Western Hemisphere”; Wikipedia, entries on Abuna Yesehaq, Joseph Hibbert, Grounation Day and Raphael Morgan.