The History of the presence of the Carmelite Fathers in Kobayat

In the year 1836 the Carmelite Fathers founded a missionary station in the Christian village (has some that say that the population of kobayat was orthodox!!). One nearly counted eight hundred people who worked most in agriculture. The father who founded the mission that was Eliseo di Santa Barbara (Italian). After him one knows some names as The father Maurizio, Domenico and the father Bernardo.

The father Stanislao del Sacro Cuore Intreccialagli (born in Rome in 1866 and death in Tripoli-Lebanon in 1928) marked this stage of the mission of Kobayat by a presence and mind Christian, human and patriotic. But especially he could give to the Christian of Kobayat a first possibility to feel free, named citizens doesn't have more to let themselves drag by the Beiks and scheikh of the Moslem tribes sustained by empire Ottoman most fanatic of the region. He arrived to Kobayat in 1897.

To the entry of the convent of the Carmelite Fathers of Kobayat, a monument recalls all Kobayatiens of ever to forget the father Stanislas…

The fathers studied Arabic since their arrival in our beautiful village. they began to exercise their ministry also in Arabic… The spirituality of the Carmel can have access at the homes of the poor, especially with the big Theresa, Theresa Lisieux and with she, Theresa Marguerite of the Sacred Heart (Redi)… a family of Saints  who touched God by the simplicity of their life…

The Third Order of the Carmel Thérésien have been founded, a school for the big and small of the village, the first in Kobayat, a pharmacy (1914), a clinic also (Doctor Casini - Italian - is famous in Kobayat)… In 1900 the fathers constructed the bridge that bound al-Deir with the zouk and the road that went circa Dahr bellan.

The golden epoch of Kobayat began either to the point of spiritual view either economic or social…It founded the modern Kobayat .

The first construction in the convent that was the church (currently the lounge) that dates the 1852. After comes the convent with the cellar and the reservoir of water that was always accessible to people of Kobayat.

In the convent installed a judicial court directed by the Padre nearly. The first construction of a school to kobayat was finished in 1908 (currently it is bet it of the birds and animals "empallés", and of the butterflies). But also a school in Martmoura and another in Gharbié.

Before this date the Carmelite sisters of Saint Theresa (Florence) come to get settled in Kobayat (1904) to continue a precious work with the young ladies and girls of Kobayat. 

The present church of the convent (Mar Doumit) date of the 1914.

The role of the Carmelite Fathers in kobayat, as the nature of the mission asked for them, didn't limit themselves to the business of spiritual life, but it touched the various fields, as the social and political life (one intervened by the European consulates to help to give appropriate solutions to the confrontations with the Musulmans of the surroundings), and economic (one encouraged of the Italian to found new factories in kobayat and Andket), and some military times also. And why not? If the situation need…

Actually, the Carmelite Fathers continue to be present in Kobayat. Our community assures a spiritual and social service by the population who counts more that ten thousand citizens left on seven parishes. The free primary school with the complementary has just been crowned by a maternal section that has the ambition to be modern and by consequence to be able to answer to all questions of the new pedagogy of the new generations of the new Kobayat.

The fraternities of the Sacred Heart, the third Order (OCDS), The Scouts and Guides of Lebanon, The clinic of the Sovereign order of Malta (controlled by the sisters of the Charity)… plain and extraordinary Activities… are witnesses of the last hundred and fifty years of the carmelitan presence in Kobayat.

This work doesn't belong to anyone, it only belongs to God, and God who guarantees it.

We invite you to enter and to observe what God worried…

The Fathers of the convent