For context see the Metropolitan Joseph: The Scandal section in our Archives 2020-22 linked at the top of this page.

James and Jasminka Chenich Gabrie

(Photo credit: Galerie Gabrie)

Yesterday, October 10, Orthodoxy in Dialogue reported that the disgraced former metropolitan of the Antiochian Archdiocese, Joseph Al-Zehlaoui, shares three addresses with an Orthodox businesswoman who plays a prominent role in the life of the Church, e.g., organizing a banquet in Al-Zehlaoui’s honour and a retreat to Serbia, among others. Her parents were family friends with our editor’s family at St. George Serbian Orthodox Church in San Diego from the 1960s on. The two young people were in his aunt’s wedding in 1971 when she was 11 and he 16. For sentimental and ethical reasons, we have withheld her name not only from yesterday’s report, but from all previous reporting in which we referred to the second woman in Al-Zehlaoui’s questionable orbit after the author of the incriminating email. Numerous sources have informed us, independently of each other, that this second woman was furious to discover from our reporting that she was not Al-Zehlaoui’s one and only love. We have reached out to her privately on three or four occasions to ask how she would want us to proceed, with no reply. We now feel compelled to go public with her identity and her stunning, nakedly self-serving attempt to advocate with Patriarch John on Al-Zehlaoui’s behalf.

To begin, we direct our readers to compare the addresses in the two screenshots below, taken from the public domain and sent to us by a priest of the Antiochian Archdiocese. They contain three addresses in common, including that of the Los Angeles chancery:

Secondly, the following letter was provided to us late last night by an insider source at the Archdiocesan chancery in Englewood:

Thirdly, one might ask why a bishop’s alleged paramour would advocate for him so eloquently and drippingly piously after learning that he had deceived her. Our Englewood source provides the following insight—allegations unverified by Orthodoxy in Dialogue:

I am attaching the letter that James and Jasminka Gabrie sent to Patriarch John X.

The motivations behind their letter are:

The departure of Metropolitan Joseph will incur a major financial loss in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to them through their remodeling business.

Metropolitan Joseph has contracted with their business using the Archdiocese’s fund to redesign at least 3 of his residences including: the headquarters in Englewood, NJ; the West Coast Diocese chancery (remodeled twice in the past ten years) in Los Angeles, CA; and Metropolitan apartment at the Antiochian Village, PA.

Also, Jasminka will lose her monthly salary of $4,000 per month because Metropolitan Joseph has been paying her that amount of money for the last 8 years.

We at Orthodoxy in Dialogue certainly agree with Mr. and Mrs. Gabrie’s wish to be contacted by investigators without delay.

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In honour of the Gabries’ swipe at same-sex marriage in their Epistle to the Patriarch, check our new GoFundMe to help a homeless gay married couple in Toronto get into suitable winter clothes for the frigid months ahead.