When Emperor Haile Selassie went into exile in 1936, he and his family
took up residence in Fairfield House in the town of Bath, England. Both
the Emperor and Empress Menen were deeply oppressed under immense
sorrow at having been driven out by the Italian invasion, and were doubly
grieved by the fact that there was no local Ethiopian Orthodox Church
for them to turn to in t
heir grief. The Empress made several trips to
and extended stays with the Ethiopian community in Jerusalem, the
Emperor then wrote a letter to the exiled Echege of Debre Libanos who
was living at the Ethiopian Monastery in Jerusalem asking him to send him
a tabot (replica ark of the covenant) dedicated to the Savior with two
priest and deacons to establish a church in Bath.
The Echege promptly did so sending the tabot of the Savior of the World
(Medhane Alem) to England with the required number of clergy. The
Emperor and his family set up the new church in the former dining room
of Fairfield House and attended mass and prayer services here. It became
known as Sidetegnaw Medhane Alem. In 1941, following the restoration of
Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne and the defeat of the Fascist
Italian forces in Ethiopia, Empress Menen returned to Addis Ababa in early
September 1941. The Tabot of Medhane Alem also arrived with her.
Initially a church was built on the grounds of the Haile Selassie I
Hospital or Beite Saida Hospital as it was then known (presently the
Yekatit 12 Hospital) to serve as the new Medhane Alem church. The
Emperor bestowed the title “Meskea-hazunan” on the Church which
translates as “Consoler of the Bereaved”, but it continued to be
referred to as Sidetegnaw “Exiled” Medhane Alem even to the present
day.
The church became a very popular place of worship, so the Emperor built
a new church building where it is now In front of Addis Ababa University.
