Saint Ignatios foundation decided this week to award Bishop Suriel of Melbourne the Order of Saint Ignatios 2017. His Grace was born in Port Said, but moved at the age of four to Australia. Bishop Suriel was nominated for having built up St. Athanasius College in Melbourne during the last ten years, which is the first Coptic institution in the world that is accredited for university degrees.
Already from the beginning, he chose an inter-orthodox line and invited other Orthodox churches to participate in constructing the institution. Patriarch Irinej of Serbia in Belgrade, with the help of Bishop Irinej, the previous bishop of the Serbian Diocese of Australia, made a pastoral visit as a confirmation of the cooperation between the church families, and father John Behr from St. Vladimirs in New York is one of the teachers who has taught at St. Athanasius.
Bishop Suriel is from the beginning a mathematics teacher, but was struck by the spiritual calling from the desert in his native land Egypt. In 1991 he became a monk in Anba Bishoy monastery responsible along with father Angelos for the English version of El Keraza. In 1993 he was ordained as priest. In 1996 he became the parish priest at Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1997 he became General Bishop with the full responsibility for administering the Archdiocese of America where he founded BLESS US (Bishopric of Ecumenical and Social Services) that are still active to collect money for the needy in Egypt.
In 1998 he completed his Master degree at St. Vladimirs in New York. In 1999, he was elected bishop of Melbourne, Canberra, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and New Zealand. Immediately after taking office, he began to build an institution of education that would be under his leadership, but with the aura of academic freedom, academic quality and educational awareness. Parallel to this, he started also his doctoral studies in theology.
