“Abuna has changed everything,” says Amal Mishael, using the Arabic term for “father.” A middle-aged community member, Ms. Mishael was visiting her 82-year-old grandmother, Nadia Shihab, during the priest’s weekly communion call. He makes roughly 75 such home visits per week to those not well enough to attend parish liturgies. “It keeps me fit,” he says, referring to the hundreds of stairs he climbs in the process. Seated alongside more than a dozen of her relatives, who spend every Sunday afternoon together in Ms. Shihab’s spotless home, Ms. Mishael says that until Father Bahus took up his post, her mother had not been to church in a decade. “Now she goes to church every week to hear his sermon. Now there’s not an empty seat in the church during the liturgy. He has returned the faith to the people.” Aida Gamal, another relative of Ms. Shihab, compliments him on his warmth and compassion as she tries to get him to eat another sweet. “We are grateful to have you as our abuna.” As he heads out the door and to his next stop, Father Bahus says such tributes are gratifying, but ultimately it is not his efforts but those of his flock that deserve recognition. “It is their work and their generosity sustaining the parish. Whatever the need, the people here are always ready. I’m just the engine,” he insists.
B
orn in the northern Israeli coastal city of Acre in 1969, Father Bahus hails from a deeply religious Catholic family, which over the years has produced 16 priests and one patriarch. His father, formerly the director of the Melkite school in Acre, was also the parish cantor, a role of considerable importance in the Byzantine Christian tradition.
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Drawn to the church at an early age, he entered the junior seminary in Nazareth at the age of 14. He recalls how, when he was 18, his parents instructed him to get a university degree instead of going straight into the priesthood. He honored their wishes but, drawn to his calling a year later, asked the advice of the late Archbishop Maximus Salloum of Galilee. “The bishop told me, ‘We are waiting for you; prepare to go to Rome to study.’ “When I told my parents, my father said, ‘Wait 15 days and if you feel the same way, then go.’ My mother said ‘No way, forget it; I want to see you married.’ ” Although Melkite Greek Catholic priests are permitted to marry before entering the priesthood, they cannot marry after receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders. By September 1989 he was studying Italian in Rome. Soon, he entered the Greek Pontifical College of St. Athanasius as a seminarian. He earned an undergraduate degree followed by a graduate degree in philosophy. During his fifth year in the seminary, he and his fellow seminarians faced a familiar question. “The seminary asks whether we wish to marry before we become priests,” Father Bahus says, noting some 75 percent of the Melkite priests in the archeparchy are married. Ultimately, he declined, and today says he has no regrets. “When you make important decisions, it’s important never to look back.” Finally, in 1996, he was ordained a priest. Upon his return to Israel, the newly ordained priest asked Archbishop Maximus to permit him to lead the parish in Acre. “He had asked other priests to serve there, but it is a very small
place, with only 400 in the Greek Catholic community. The building had been abandoned for 20 years and there was no resident priest.” The archbishop granted the request on the condition that, during the week, he also serve as vice director of the St. Joseph School in Nazareth. The fresh-faced priest brought his trademark enthusiasm back to Acre, where he made it a priority to renovate the church and reinvigorate his childhood parish, small though it was. Then, seven years ago, he assumed his position as parish priest in Shefa-‘Amr, where he celebrates the Divine Liturgy three times on Sundays, among other priestly duties — providing spiritual support to his parishioners, visiting the sick and presiding at baptisms, weddings and funerals. Father Bahus also celebrates the liturgy once a week in Acre and spends three to four days a week in the city of Haifa, where he serves as the chief financial officer in the archbishop’s office. Three or four times a week he celebrates the liturgy at the Sisters of Nazareth School in Shefa-‘Amr, where he serves as the school’s spiritual leader. “There are 74,000 Melkite believers in the Galilee who attend 30 churches,” he says of the region he serves, which is home to nearly half of Israel’s 162,000 Christians. “There are another 5,000 to 6,000 believers in Jerusalem and the West Bank. We are the largest church in Shefa-‘Amr.” z Father Bahus has made education a priority at his parish. Here, he makes a point while instructing children at his church. u On Sunday, the priest brings communion to the elderly and homebound.