Nigra sum sed formosa

The Queen of Sheba's line from the Solomon's Canticle Of Canticles is the title of "[a]n exhibition in Venice [that] sheds light on a Church that is almost unknown in the rest of the world, and yet is numerous and flourishing, with extremely ancient origins and strong Jewish traits" — Ethiopia, an Astonishing Christianity on African Soil. Sandro Magister offers this brief but informative history:

According to the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 8, the first pagan converted to the Christian faith was an Ethiopian follower of Judaism, a high official in the kingdom, baptized by the apostle Philip along the road between Jerusalem and Gaza.

In any case, Ethiopia was already Christian by the first half of the fourth century. Its closest connection was to Alexandria in Egypt, the patriarch of which appointed the metropolitan archbishop of the kingdom's capital. The two Churches, Coptic Egyptian and Ethiopian, have also been bound together since then by their Monophysite faith, which recognizes only the divine nature of Christ. They accept the first three councils, of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus, but not the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which established the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, divine and human. For this reason, the Coptic and Ethiopian churches are also called "pre-Chalcedonian."

The isolation of Christian Egypt was reinforced by the expansion of Islam, which surrounded the kingdom and repeatedly tried to conquer it, but was always pushed back by a tenacious resistance.

The greatest danger came in the 16th century. Ethiopia asked for help from Portugal, which sent an armada and defeated the Muslims. At that time, an attempt was also made to bring the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia back into union with the Church of Rome. St. Ignatius of Loyola worked on it personally. Jesuit missionaries arrived in two waves. At the beginning of the 1700's, Ethiopian kings embraced Catholicism. But immediately afterward, this attempt at union foundered.

In the 20th century – after the bloody interlude of the Italian colonial war – efforts were made to reinvigorate the Ethiopian Church by the emperor at the time, Haile Selassié. Until then, the sole bishop of that Church had been appointed and sent by the Coptic patriarch of Alexandria in Egypt. Haile Selassié first obtained an autonomous ecclesiastical hierarchy, and then, in 1959, autonomy in appointing the metropolitan, who was elevated to the dignity of patriarch.

In 1974, the Marxist-Leninist regime of Colonel Menghistu seized power. Patriarch Teofilos was arrested and later strangled in prison. His successor, Paulos, was also imprisoned and tortured, for seven years, and then sent into exile in the United States. He returned to his country in 1992, after the fall of the Menghistu regime, and is still in office. In 1993, he met at the Vatican with Pope John Paul II, who offered him a church in Rome for the celebration of liturgies for Ethiopian rite immigrants.

Patriarch Paulos says the Church of Ethiopia can boast of "more than 50,000 churches in the entire country" and of "80 percent participation at Mass each Sunday" as well as "1,200 monasteries in the whole country, and about 50,000 monks and nuns."