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The Romaïan Cultural Society (RCS) has established, since 2016, a committee to honor reposed and living Romaïan endowed personalities, currently headed by Dr. Elie Moacdié, and including Dr. Raja Wakim, Dr. Mounir Abou Assali, and Dr. Toufic Al-Melhem. This committee seeks to a list of creative personalities who have excelled in their professional, social, and religious lives and who have distinguished themselves by their great creativity, devoid of private interest, selfishness, and sectarianism. The committee proposes to the Executive Council of the Society who it deems to be the most deserving person, so that the Council chooses from among them one or more personality to honor on the 29th of May, in commemoration of the martyrdom of the royal city of Constantinople, New Rome, when it was devastated in the year 1453.
In the year 2024, the Selection Committee and the Executive Council chose the architect, great musical artist, and brilliant academician Alexis Gebrane Boutros, who founded the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in the mid-twentieth century in Beirut.
The ceremony took place at the ALBA, located in the Dekwaneh area. The ALBA is currently affiliated with the University of Balamand. A joint committee from the Romaïan Cultural Society and the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts managed the event, which was carried out on Saturday, the first of June 2024. This committee included Architect Fadlallah Dagher, Dean of the ALBA, Professor Negib Geahchan, President of the RCS, Architect Roni Richa, Mrs. Lina. Fakhoury, Dr. Elie Abdel-Hak, Dr. Elie Moacdié, Architect Gabriel Andrea, and Mr Roland Khairallah.
This ceremony followed the fourth scientific conference of the RCS, which took place in Samir Abillama amphitheater in Alba. It included a speech by Professor Negib Geahchan, President of the RCS, which served as an introduction to the homage, in which he said: “Our homage for Alexis Boutros becomes solidly rooted when we recall the difficulties he faced and the conspiracies that were hatched to destroy his achievements and institutions. He confronted them with faith, boldness, fortitude, and stubbornness, mixed to faith, love, and hope that are the characteristics of a Christian believer.”
The honoring ceremony was chaired by the Dean of the Academy, the architect Fadlallah Dagher, and the list of speakers included the Architect Samir Abillama, the former Secretary General of ALAB, Mrs. Claude Nahas, the former Board member, Mrs. Nicole Harfouche, who held also many academic administrative positions, and the former dean of the academy, the architect André Bekhaazi. All of their interventions were life testimonies that revealed the details of the honoree’s biography and shed light on the great impact left by this exceptional Lebanese Romaïan innovator.
After the ceremony attended by the President of the University of Balamand, Dr. Elias Al-Warraq, the President of the RCS, Dr. Geahchan, handed over the Alexis Boutros’s certificate of registration in the Golden Register of Deceased Romaian Endowed Persons to the President of the University and to the Dean of ALBA, when the attendees sang the Anthem of Constantinople, adopted by the RCS as its official anthem. At the end of this meeting, Rev. Archimandrite Seraphim (Bardawil) and Rev. Father Romanos (Gebrane), presided over the Trisagion prayer for the repose of the soul of the deceased Alexis Boutros and all the deceased persons mentioned in the Golden Register.
Who is Alexis Boutros?
Alexis Boutros is one of the Romaïan giants of the twentieth century. He was born in Beirut in 1915 in an ancient Romaïan family, and spent his life there. He studied civil engineering at the St Joseph University and worked as such, but he had a passion for music since his childhood. He contributed to establishing and leading a group of amateur musicians. Since the fourth decade of the twentieth century, this group has excelled in holding successful concerts and performing major artistic works in various academic and artistic edifices in Lebanon and the East.
In 1943, the year Lebanon gained its complete independence, Alexis Boutros succeeded in establishing the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, which received a presidential decree as a Lebanese institution of public benefit. It was the first higher educational institution of a national character. Initially, this academy included three schools: architecture, music, and painting.
The academy’s remarkable success contributed to the establishment of other art schools in it, expanding and including institutes of arts, political science, and law. But the latter was canceled, due to suspicious interference, when its structure was transferred to the Public Lebanese University.
After his death in 1979, and he remained celibate until then, the ALBA became one of the three faculties that formed the University of Balamand, which remains of remarkable fame. To this day, ALBA remains one of the most important Lebanese scientific institutions specialized in fine arts.
Alexis Boutros was an active member of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Beirut, a member of the Cathedral Endowment Council, Vice President of the Orthodox Charitable Society, and Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Orthodox College of Annunciation. Alexis Boutros is considered a creative personality and a great innovator in the world of art and engineering, distinguished by unparalleled courage and extreme audacity in transferring his ideas and dreams to the world of reality. He is greatly credited with establishing the Lebanese higher education institutes, without any external aid. He is an example of the great Romaïan innovators in the Levant who, with absolute detachment and deep love, consecrated themselves and their efforts to serve humanity, science, and their nation.
