Archimandrite Symeon Papadopoulos was unanimously elected as the new Archbishop of Mount Sinai and Raithu over the weekend by a general assembly of the brotherhood of monks at the historic St. Catherine’s Monastery, which means he will also assume the reins of the latter as its abbot, or hegumen, per the Orthodox ecclesiastical title.

Archimandrite Symeon received the votes of 19 out of the 20 eligible monks at the venerable Greek Orthodox institution, considered as the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. The sole blank vote was cast by Symeon himself, in line with the ancient rite.

The unanimous election of a new hegumen to succeed 91-year-old Damianos, now the Elder Archbishop of Sinai, is seen as ending unprecedented discord at the monastery, as two opposing “camps” emerged recently in the wake of a shocking Egyptian appeals court decision threatening the very existence of the historic monastery. Namely, roughly half the monks had demanded Damianos’ resignation, while the other half remained faithful to the latter.

The new Archbishop of Sinai was born and raised in the port city of Piraeus, in Greece, where he previously served as the director a Church-run elderly home in the Tambouria district of Piraeus. His Eminence Symeon was until his election assigned to the monastery’s glebe at the Alepochori area, northwest of greater Athens along the Gulf of Corinth.

He is a graduate of theology and Greek letters and also served as chief librarian at St. Catherine’s Monastery, which contains an invaluable collection of tomes and archives.