In the last decade of his life, Father Albīr Abūnā (1928-2021) sat down in Stockholm, Sweden, or in Erbil, Iraq, translating works of popular Catholic authors into Arabic. These authors include Pope Francis, Anselm Grün, Raniero Cantalamessa, Carlo M. Martini, and Joan Chittister. Father Albīr worked on the French originals or translations of these works with publication in mind. Thus, he wrote some instructions to the publishers such as “put a photo of the author here,” or “this paragraph is to be added as a blurb,” and so on. Additionally, he translated a couple of works from Syriac and Aramaic old editions into Arabic.

His private manuscript collection (PLE FAA) consists of 67 manuscripts that represent mainly the autographs of these translations. They were digitized by HMML in 2018 and are now available in the Reading Room. View now