Letter from Father Joseph Yazbek to the Maronite Patriarch Yuhanna el-Hajj
Bkerki, Lebanon
House of the Maronite Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East
About The Lebanese University, Bkerki
24 December 1898
Father Joseph Yazbek
Paper, ink
A small but growing Maronite community settled in the Chinatown area of Boston in the 1890s. In 1893, the Archbishop of Boston, John Williams, assigned F. Gabriel Korkemaz as the first Maronite priest. He was succeeded by his cousin, F. Stephan Korkemaz, two years later, and shortly afterwards by F. Joseph Yazbek. At the time, the hundred-or-so families that formed Boston's Maronite community worshiped at the St. James' Church on Harrison Avenue. Father Yazbek later bought a four-storey building on Tyler Street, which he remodelled to include a chapel, social hall, and priest's residence. This letter is a copy of a letter sent by Father Yazbek to the Maronite Patriarch Yuhanna el-Hajj, inviting him to the ceremony dedicating the Syro-Maronite chapel to Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon.
Maronite Patriarchate Archives
Marie Therese Moujabber "Letter from Father Joseph Yazbek to the Maronite Patriarch Yuhanna el-Hajj" in "Sharing History", Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://sharinghistory.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;AWE;lb;50;en
Prepared by: Marie Therese Moujabber
Copyedited by: Flaminia Baldwin
MWNF Working Number: LB 061