Buffalo’s Maronite Catholics

When speaking of the Catholic Church’s Eastern Rites, the late Pope John Paul II often said: “The Church must breathe fully with both its lungs: the Eastern Churches and the Western.” The Maronite Rite, dating back to the fourth century, is one of the oldest in the Church. One scholar notes that the Maronites “have no counterpart among the Orthodox and Oriental Christian Churches and claim they have never broken their union with the Roman Church.” Maronites began to emigrate to the United States from Lebanon in large numbers in the 1880’s. The first Maronite church in America, St. Joseph, was established in Manhattan in 1890. Today there are over fifty thousand Maronites in the United States. By the late 1890’s, Buffalo had a sizeable Maronite community. In 1903, St. John Maron was established there as a Maronite parish. Father Antoun A. Zoghby (seen above), a native of Lebanon, was the first pastor. A parochial school was established in 1912 under the Sisters of St. Francis. By 1914 the parish had about 500 members. Father Zoghby left the parish in 1904 and founded several other Maronite parishes throughout the United States. Today St. John Maron continues to serve the needs of Maronite Catholics in western New York.