Church History
An ancient faith, carried from Aksum to Pretoria.
Our Parish
Pretoria Hamere Noh Kidane Mihret Church serves the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo community of Pretoria and the surrounding areas of Gauteng. The parish is dedicated to Kidane Mihret — the Covenant of Mercy granted to St Mary — and gathers each week for the Divine Liturgy in Ge’ez and Amharic.
Beyond worship, the parish is a home for families far from Ethiopia: a place to keep the fasts together, to teach children the language and the faith, and to mark the great feasts of the church year as they have been marked for sixteen centuries.
The detailed history of this parish — its founding, its first clergy, and the families who built it — can be written from Admin → Site Content → Parish History.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
The Apostolic Age
The Acts of the Apostles records the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch, treasurer to Queen Candace, by the deacon Philip. Ethiopian Christians count this among the earliest conversions outside Jerusalem.
The Fourth Century
Christianity became the faith of the Aksumite kingdom under King Ezana. Frumentius, consecrated by Athanasius of Alexandria, became the first bishop and is remembered as Abba Selama, the Revealer of Light.
The Nine Saints
Monastic fathers from the Eastern Roman world settled in the highlands, founded monasteries, and translated the scriptures into Ge’ez — the liturgical language still used in our services.
Autocephaly, 1959
After sixteen centuries under the See of Alexandria, Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria crowned Abune Basilios as the first Patriarch of Ethiopia in 1959. The Church became self-governing while remaining in communion with the Oriental Orthodox family. It counts some 36 to 51 million faithful in Ethiopia today.
The Church in the Diaspora
As Ethiopian families settled across the world, parishes followed — carrying the liturgy, the fasts, and the calendar into new cities so that the faith could be kept in full.
The Meaning of Tewahedo
Tewahedo (ተዋሕዶ) is Ge'ez for "being made one". It expresses the confession that in Christ divinity and humanity are united in one nature — without separation, without confusion, without alteration and without mixing. This confession is shared with the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Eritrean and Indian Orthodox Churches, together known as the Oriental Orthodox communion.