{"id":12456,"date":"2026-09-10T14:52:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T18:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/?p=12456"},"modified":"2026-09-10T14:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T18:55:17","slug":"bualumsucceedsmentor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/2026\/09\/10\/bualumsucceedsmentor\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethlehem University Alumnus Succeeds Mentor"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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New CEO of the Latin Patriarchate Begins Work<\/h2>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

In the mid-1980s, a business student at Bethlehem University named Johny Zeidan crossed paths with faculty member Sami El-Yousef, who became his mentor. Four decades later, El-Yousef would pass down the title of CEO of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (LPJ) to him.<\/p>\n

El-Yousef spent twenty-four years at Bethlehem University, serving as a faculty member, dean, and eventually Vice President for Finance and Planning, before becoming the first layperson ever to serve as CEO of the LPJ in 2017. Zeidan, meanwhile, built a career in international development, including several years managing multi-million-dollar portfolios at USAID, before returning to Bethlehem University in 2020, thirty years after his undergraduate degree, to earn his Master\u2019s in International Cooperation and Development.<\/p>\n

On September 1, 2026, Zeidan succeeded his former mentor at the helm of the Patriarchate.<\/p>\n

“I had the privilege of meeting Johny during my early career at Bethlehem University in the mid-eighties,” El-Yousef wrote in his farewell letter, “and [I’m] proud to call him a bright former student.” Reflecting on a career that began “in the corridors of Bethlehem University” and carried him through decades of change across the Holy Land, El-Yousef wrote that he leaves the Patriarchate “with full confidence” in Zeidan and the team he built.<\/p>\n

\"Sami

Sami El-Yousef CEO LPJ<\/p><\/div>\n

In an interview with Villanova University, El-Yousef said, “This is the time to appreciate the value set of our Christian institutions and do whatever is possible to preserve them and develop them and allow them to grow. Their contribution . . . is a priceless contribution that should be preserved at all costs.”<\/p>\n

Asked where he saw those values most reflected in his own life spent inside institutions like Bethlehem University, the Pontifical Mission, and the LPJ, where Christian and Muslim students often shared a classroom, and even a hospital bed, he pointed to a simple truth: “These institutions become models for the inter-religious dialogue experience that is lived rather than talked about.”<\/p>\n

Bethlehem University Foundation\u2019s Executive Director, Waleed Zaru, has long ties to the Zeidan family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"class_list":["post-12456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-media-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12461,"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12456\/revisions\/12461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bufusa.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}